LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

GIFT  OF 

0'. 


BIOLOGY  \  \ 

LIBRARY  Class 

G 


Natural  Salvation 

The  Message  of  Science 

OUTLINING   THE   FIRST  PRINCIPLES   OF  IMMORTAL 
LIFE  ON  THE  EARTH 


BY 


C.  A.  STEPHENS,  M.  D. 


THE     LABORATORY 

NORWAY  LAKE,  MAINE 

1903 


BIOLOGY 

LIBRARY 

G 


COPYRIGHT,  1903 

BY 
C.  A.  STEPHENS,  M.  D. 


THE  BARTA  PRESS 
BOSTON,  MASS. 


DEDICATION. 


Natural  Salvation  is  addressed  to  all  earnest 
students  of  Life  and  dedicated  to  that  greater 
new  era  of  Humanity  which  Science  ushers  in. 


1 58030 


PREFATORY  NOTE. 


The  researches  made  at  this  laboratory  and  its  publica- 
tions embrace, 

LIVING  MATTER  ;  Its  Cycle  of  G-rowth  and  Decline  in 
Animal  Organisms.  1888. 

PLURICELLULAR  MAN;  Whence  and  What  is  the  Soul? 
1892. 

LONG  LIFE  ;  An  Investigation  of  the  Intimate  Causes  of 
Old-Aging  and  Organic  Death,  with  a  View  to  their 
Alleviation  and  Removal.  1896. 

NATURAL  SALVATION  ;  The  Message  of  Science ;  Out- 
lining the  First  Principles  of  Immortal  Life  on  the  Earth. 
1903. 


NATURAL  SALVATION. 

THE  MESSAGE  OF  SCIENCE. 

TT  is  a  part  of  the  unwritten  code  of  science  that  the 
•••  investigator  shall  avoid  a  priori  conclusions,  look 
coldly  upon  theory,  and  be  wary  of  hypothesis.  In  a 
word,  that  he  shall  devote  himself  patiently  to  the  acquisi- 
tion of  data,  be  content  to  collect  facts,  and  live  abstinent 
of  the  ever-present  human  weakness  to  play  the  role*  of 
prophet. 

Nothing,  indeed,  so  surely  distinguishes  the  man  of 
science  from  the  charlatan  as  his  attitude  toward  theory 
and  his  caution  in  presenting  conclusions.  A  single  page, 
often  a  single  paragraph,  of  the  article,  or  the  book  of  a 
writer  on  scientific  subjects,  enables  us  to  judge  all  too 
accurately  of  the  value,  or  lack  of  value,  of  his  entire 
effort ;  and,  generally  speaking,  the  verdict  turns  on  the 
care  with  which  he  draws  conclusions  from  data. 

Science  has  endured  so  much  of  premature  vaticination 
that  its  best  friends  and  exponents  have  come  to  regard 
all  that  sort  of  thing  with  marked  hostility,  as  detrimental 
to  true  progress.  There  is  a  disposition  to  put  injudicious 


8  Natural  Salvation. 

enthusiasts  outside  the  pale.  A  certain  regimen  has  come 
to  prevail ;  immature  publication  is  held  to  be  bad  form 
as  well  as  futile.  Humility  and  an  educated  conservatism 
characterize  the  truly  scientific  mind:  the  attitude  of 
Newton  at  the  end  of  his  grand  discoveries. 

With  all  that  biology  has  of  late  demonstrated,  we 
know  too  little  still  to  say  much  of  ultimate  things. 
The  time  has  not  yet  come  when  the  creed  of  science  can 
be  written  in  full  for  general  acceptance  and  signature. 

It  is  in  the  nature  and  constitution  of  the  human  mind, 
however,  to  believe  something.  The  history  of  mankind 
shows  that  those  tribes,  nations,  and  races  which  have 
gone  forward  with  the  greatest  energy,  have  been  actuated 
and  incited  by  confident  beliefs  as  to  the  origin  and 
destiny  of  human  beings. 

In  like  manner  the  scientist  has  often  found  hypothesis 
an  adjuvant ;  for  an  hypothesis  is  of  the  nature  of  a  belief. 
Some  of  the  most  signal  discoveries  in  astronomy,  chem- 
istry and  biology  have  been  elicited  under  guidance  of 
provisional  theories.  There  is  a  use  as  well  as  abuse  of 
hypothesis;  and,  moreover,  the  theories  of  science  are 
often  bonafide  glimpses  of  truth. 

So  at  present,  when  the  old  faiths  are  fading  out,  like 
ghosts  at  dawn,  when  venerable  "  soul  doctrines "  are 
falling  into  desuetude  and  discredit,  glimpses  of  the 
truth  come  and  will  serve  to  light  us  forward  in  the 
great  outer  darkness  of  the  universe. 


The  Message  of  Science.  9 

As  such  and  such  only  are  the  present  outlines  of  a 
greater  gospel  put  forward :  a  provisional  belief  to  be  used 
as  a  scientist  uses  an  hypothesis ;  probably  true,  better 
certainly  than  the  existent  babel  of  doctrines. 

As  regards  Christianity,  biological  science  now  goes 
far  to  substantiate  and  confirm  the  original  scheme  of  life 
and  salvation,  as  conceived  and  taught  by  the  Founder, 
but  will  purge  it  and  separate  it  from  those  adventitious 
doctrines  which  Church  Fatherg,  Bishops  and  Synods 
engrafted  upon  the  new  religion  during  the  first  three 
centuries  of  its  existence.  These  doctrines  were  never 
essentially  Christian,  nor  even  Jewish,  but  of  the  nature 
of  ingrowths  from  Persian,  Greek,  and  Egyptian  systems 
of  philosophy. 

Christianity,  however,  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  more 
than  one  of  the  religious  beliefs  of  America.  Allah, 
Brahma,  Joss,  and  Mormon,  as  well  as  the  Hebrew  Jehovah, 
are  now  worshiped  among  us.  Asia  and  Africa,  as  well 
as  Europe,  have  contributed  to  the  amazing  melange  of 
tenets  which  stand  for  religion  in  the  United  States. 
Never  in  the  world's  history  has  such  diversity  of  belief 
been  exhibited  in  one  country ;  yet  each  of  these  hundred 
and  ten  different  cults  is  endeared  to  thousands  of  im- 
migrant devotees  by  ancestral  ties  and  traditions. 

If  by  some  megaphonic  device  we  were  able  to  hear, 
at  one  time  arid  in  one  place,  the  amazing  outcry  of 
doctrines  which  goes  up  in  thousands  of  churches,  temples, 


io  Natural  Salvation. 

and  other  places  of  religious  worship,  the  confusion 
would  out-jargon  that  on  the  Plain  of  Shinar. 

Such  multiples  of  contradictory  doctrines  mutually  dis- 
credit each  other.  It  has  followed  naturally  that  the 
younger  generation,  born  in  America  and  educated  in  the 
public  schools  where  general  scientific  knowledge  is  im- 
parted, is  quite  without  a  faith,  in  the  old-time  meaning 
of  that  word,  and  looks  to  science  for  its  real  tenets. 

Nor  looks  in  vain.  Even  now,  already,  science  is  able 
to  outline  a  new  and  greater  faith  ;  and  no  prophetic  gift 
is  required  to  assure  us  that  this  new  faith  will  be  the 
religion  of  future  America. 

For  a  new  hope  has  come  to  the  human  heart,  the  hope 
of  salvation  from  "  sin "  and  death  by  natural  means : 
Natural  salvation,  contra-distinguished  from  supernatural 
salvation.  Supernaturalism  has  been  the  burden  of  all 
previous  religious  systems.  In  all  the  past,  human  hopes 
have  founded  on  rite,  sacrifice,  and  supernatural  rescue. 
But  the  keynote  and  initiative  of  the  message  of  science 
is  natural  salvation :  salvation  under  nature,  accomplished 
by  the  growth  and  conservation  of  human  knowledge. 

In  all  the  past  man  has  turned  to  the  skies  and  prayed 
to  powers  beyond  the  earth  for  salvation ;  but  now,  at  the 
dawn  of  the  twentieth  century,  he  turns  to  himself  and 
gravely,  hopefully  estimates  the  problem  of  self-salvation. 

Moreover,  self-salvation,  when  regarded  in  the  light  of 
our  present  greater  knowledge,  is  seen  not  to  be  new  at 


The  Message  of  Science.  n 

all,  but  to  have  been  in  progress  ever  since  life  first  found 
foothold  on  the  earth's  surface !  Apparently  it  has  been 
in  the  natural  order  of  things  from  the  beginning. 

We  shall  be  able  to  show  that  natural  salvation  has 
been  the  tendency  and  trend  of  the  evolution  of  life  on  the 
earth ;  that  from  the  Silurian  ages  upward,  life  has  put 
forth  and  developed  toward  a  naturally  attained  freedom 
from  evil  conditions,  "sin"  and  death;  and  moreover  that 
the  prospect  for  this  is  good.  There  is  so  much  doubt, 
disheartenment  and  pessimism  in  the  world  that  a  plain 
statement  of  the  human  situation  from  the  biological  point 
of  view  cannot  be  otherwise  than  morally  healthy.  The 
progress  of  this  great  life  movement  on  the  surface  of  the 
globe  constitutes  a  drama  of  surpassing  interest,  the 
grandest  spectacle  in  nature. 

As  to  the  origin  of  life  on  the  earth,  we  have  no  certain 
knowledge  as  yet,  whether  it  came  here  from  some  other 
world  in  space,  or  originated  here  from  a  capacity  to  live 
inherent  in  matter.  The  former  supposition  puts  the 
question  of  origin  one  step  farther  away ;  the  latter  is  the 
one  to  which  all  intermediary  theories  must  ultimately 
lead ;  for  life  is  the  subjective  side  of  matter,  its  personal 
attribute :  that  property  which  renders  the  "  ion "  a 
"psychon." 

It  is  not  difficult  to  believe  that  there  are  other  plane- 
tary globes  where  life  develops  more  easily  and  with  less 
travail  and  duress  than  on  our  earth.  It  is  not  incredible 


12  Natural  Salvation. 

that  the  first  cell,  spore,  or  perhaps  still  more  rudimentary 
germ  of  life,  arrived  here  from  some  other  world.  It  has 
been  held  that  the  "  molecule  of  protoplasm,"  so  called, 
could  not  have  originated  on  the  earth.  Cell  life  does 
not  now  come  into  existence  spontaneously ;  and  the 
inference  is  easy  that  the  first  unicellular  life  of  the  globe 
was  from  an  implantation. 

This  conjecture  once  admitted,  the  next  surmise  might 
be  that  the  earth  was  life-seeded  by  design,  or  from  per- 
sonal motives,  on  the  part  of  intelligent  beings  inhabit- 
ing a  more  life-fertile  globe  in  space.  And  it  is  more 
reassuring  to  think  that  such  vital  implantation  was  from 
beneficent  design  and  to  conceive  of  it  as  Divine.  It  is  a 
moral  contradiction  that  beings  more  intelligent  than  man 
should  be  malevolent.  On  this  earth,  at  least,  intellectual 
development  does  not  tend  to,  or  eventuate  in,  malevolence 
and  cruelty,  but  rather  in  a  desire  to  give  happiness.  By 
human  standards,  an  omniscient  mind  could  not  be  a 
"Satan";  yet  we  do  not  know  what  exists  afar.  To  the 
normal  mind  there  is  not  much  in  the  present  life  struggle 
on  the  earth  that  indicates  mercy,  kindness,  or  beneficence. 

There  is  no  biological  evidence,  pro  or  con.  The  atti- 
tude of  the  universe  toward  life  on  the  earth  seems  to  be 
impersonal  and  neutral.  Animal  and  vegetable  life 
grows,  bears  seed  and  dies,  unwatered,  uncherished,  un- 
harvested.  And  while  at  first,  owing  to  long  indoctrina- 
tion, this  thought  of  uncherished  neglect  pains  many 


The  Message  of  Science.  13 

minds,  it  must  on  reflection   come  to  be  regarded  as  a 
glorious  heritage  of  liberty  —  the  liberty  of  .the  universe. 

As  nearly  as  can  be  estimated  there  is  on  the  surface  of 
the  earth,  at  present,  "  protoplasm  "  (meaning  matter  tem- 
porarily in  that  condition  of  reciprocal  activity  which  we 
term  "living  matter  ")  to  the  amount  of  5,500,460,500,000 
tons. 

Temporarily  in  the  living  condition,  we  say.  For  a 
significant  almost  startling  phase  of  it  is,  that  this  vast 
quantity  of  matter  is  constantly  passing  out  of  the  living 
into  the  non-living  condition.  As  often  as  once  in  six 
hours,  probably,  once  in  twelve  certainly  on  an  average, 
the  entire  five  or  six  trillions  of  tons  of  protoplasmic  mat- 
ter falls  out  of  the  living  into  the  non-living  condition ; 
and  pari  passu  an  equally  vast  weight  of  non-living  mat- 
ter is  raised  up  to  the  living  condition.  It  is  believed 
that  all,  or  the  most  part,  of  the  matter  which  makes  up 
the  outer  strata  of  the  earth  to  the  depth  of  many  miles, 
has  at  some  time  or  other  been  in  the  living  state,  and  not 
once  or  twice  only,  but  many  times. 

We  may,  indeed,  go  much  farther  and  not  exceed 
what  is  probable  in  supposing  that  in  the  great  past 
history  of  the  universe  —  a  history  of  successive  series 
of  solar  and  planetary  formations  —  matter  has  lived  in 
an  infinite  number  of  forms  and  types  of  life  from 
eternity,  intermittently  and  alternately. 


14  Natural  Salvation. 

For  here  it  is  significant  to  note  the  reversion  of 
scientific  opinion  from  the  extremes  of  the  dynamic 
hypothesis  of  pure  force,  toward  the  Newtonian  idea. 
Light  and  also  heat  and  electricity  are  not  only  dynamic, 
but  material.  Force,  so  far  as  we  know  it,  is  always 
associated  with  an  efflux  of  matter. 

The  method  by  which  this  continuous  passage  of  non- 
living into  living  matter  is  effected,  is  association  and 
contact  with  previously  existing  living  matter.  The 
non-living  must  be  infused  into  the  living  matter  ere  the 
non-living  can  be  re-vitalized. 

The  intimate  impulse  which  accomplishes  this  vast 
transfiguration  seems  to  be  a  subjective  one,  resident  in  the 
"protoplasm"  itself,  or,  in  other  words,  in  the  matter 
which  is,  for  the  passing  hour,  in  the  living  condition, 
and  which  sinks  down  from  that  living  condition,  while  in 
the  act  of  raising  up  non-living  matter  to  its  own  level. 
The  impulse,  or  working  energy,  is  apparently  a  trans- 
gression ef  subjective  sentience  into  matter-moving  power 
or  motion,  effected  at  a  great  depth  of  atomicity,  on  that 
low  plane  where  particles  are  able  to  move  in  response 
to  a  primarily  sentient  property  which  they  universally 


It  is  from  this  low  plane,  or  condition  of  tenuity,  that 
"protoplasm"  is  built  up,  and  sets  forth  in  its  wonderful 
career.  On  the  earth  as  we  now  inhabit  it,  life  struggles 
upward  from  this  deep-lying,  sentient  plane  of  matter  in 


The  Message  of  Science.  15 

the  teeth  of  a  gigantic  resistance.  The  energy  in  proto- 
plasm is  largely  expended  in  overcoming  this  molar 
resistance ;  the  bulk  of  our  living  substance  has  neces- 
sarily been  impressed  into  mechanical  service,  —  bone, 
teeth,  hair,  cuticle,  muscle,  tendon,  in  order  to  make  way 
and  obtain  food.  This,  in  fact,  is  life  on  earth,  as  man 
has  thus  far  led  it ;  but  it  is  possible  to  improve  the  earth 
as  a  theater  of  life,  and  by  the  control  and  regulation  of 
its  "  natural  forces  "  to  lessen  the  resistance. 

Growth  is  a  law  of  living  matter ;  and  on  the  earth's 
surface  protoplasm  is  capable,  under  ordinarily  favorable 
circumstances,  of  increasing  its  bulk  much  more  rapidly 
than  it  wastes,  or  dies. 

It  is  able  to  conserve  energy.  A  cell  is  capable  of 
raising  up  a  greater  amount  of  non-living  matter  into  the 
living  condition  than  it  loses  from  the  living  condition  by 
the  act  of  so  doing. 

The  only  limit  to  such  growth  is  the  capacity  of  the 
earth  as  a  field  for  life;  it  constantly  sustains  as  much 
matter  in  the  living  condition  as  it  has  room  for.  The 
various  genera  and  species  of  living  things,  moreover, 
mutually  limit  and  restrict  each  other.  But  for  animals, 
plants  would  probably  overrun  the  earth  to  the  full  ex- 
tent of  its  standing  room ;  but  for  some  species  of  animals, 
others  would  increase  inordinately.  Bacteria,  in  a  favor- 
able medium,  propagate  at  a  rate  of  which  no  conception 
can  be  given  in  figures. 


1 6  Natural  Salvation. 

The  point  of-  interest  concerning  this  is  that,  given 
favorable  conditions,  with  no  checks  to  its  growth,  the 
tiniest  dot  of  protoplasm  might  convert  all  the  available 
matter  of  the  universe  into  protoplasm !  or,  in  other  words, 
when  once  a  modicum  of  matter,  ever  so  small,  has 
entered  the  living  condition,  it  has  the  power  to  draw 
an  infinite  quantity  of  contiguous  matter  into  the  same 
life-expressing  combination,  and  continue  the  process  in- 
definitely. It  is  as  if  the  universe  of  matter  were  com- 
bustible and  the  dot  of  protoplasm,  introduced  into  it, 
were  a  spark  of  fire,  —  with  this  important  difference, 
however,  that  growth  of  living  matter  implies  the  raising 
up  of  matter  to  higher  degrees  of  complexity,  or  the 
storing  up  of  potential  energy  in  matter,  the  reverse  of 
igneous  combustion.  While  we  cannot  affirm  that  growth 
of  protoplasm  is  creative  of  energy,  it  is  certainly  con- 
servative of  energy  in  a  manner  elsewhere  and  otherwise 
unknown. 

In  protoplasm,  a  higher  or  more  primary  attribute 
of  matter,  to  wit,  sentience,  appears  to  make  heat,  light, 
and  kindred  modes  of  energy  its  servants  and  to  success- 
fully stem  the  ordinary  effects  of  katabolism. 

In  past  ages  of  the  world,  noticeably  the  carboniferous, 
a  far  greater  quantity  of  matter  has  been  in  the  living 
condition  at  one  and  the  same  time  than  at  present ;  the 
indications  are  that  there  have  been  periods  when  the 
continents  sustained  twenty  times  more  vegetable  proto- 


The  Message  of  Science.  17 

plasm,  year  by  year,  than  during  the  present  era.  From 
age  to  age  the  quantity  has  varied  in  accord  with  the 
terrestrial  conditions. 

As  yet  we  know  no  method  of  transmuting  non-living 
into  living  matter  apart  from  the  agency  of  previously 
existent  living  matter.  But  no  more  can  we  at  present 
make  feldspar,  or  mica,  or  gold,  or  silver,  or  lead.  It  is 
as  likely  that  we  shall  discover  a  method  of  producing 
living  matter,  as  that  we  shall  learn  to  produce  any  of 
these  substances.  The  task  waits  a  deeper  knowledge  of 
matter,  but  is  impossible  only  for  the  present. 

One  reason  for  believing  that  new  protoplasm  and  new 
protozoa  no  longer  come  into  existence  spontaneously,  is 
that  many  or  all  of  the  micro-organisms  which  we  study 
under  the  microscope  are  new  only  in  the  sense  of  being 
newly  discovered  by  us.  Many  of  the  disease-bacteria 
were  at  least  operative  and  produced  the  same  poisons 
three  thousand  years  ago.  The  diatomacese  of  to-day  ex- 
hibit the  same  characteristics  and  the  same  silicious  enve- 
lope as  those  taken  from  fossiliferous  strata  laid  down  in 
the  seas  of  the  tertiary  epoch.  In  fact,  many  of  the  gen- 
era of  micro-organisms  are  the  most  venerable  and  change- 
less of  any  upon  the  earth.  Nor  can  we  wholly  agree  with 
those  who  regard  these  minute  creatures  as  the  most  rudi- 
mentary of  living  forms.  It  by  no  means  follows  that  be- 
cause a  living  creature  is  small,  that  it  is  hence  exceedingly 
simple  and  recent  in  the  sense  of  ancestry  and  heredity. 


i8  Natural  Salvation. 

Another  featnre  of  this  vast  body  of  terrestrial  living 
matter,  the  most  remarkable,  characteristic,  and  important 
feature  indeed,  is  the  singular  mode  in  which  it  exists  or 
lives,  from  moment  to  moment.  Although  of  such  vast 
bulk  and  weight  when  considered  in  the  aggregate,  it  is 
never  found  in  continuous  bulk,  but  always  exists  as  mi- 
nute modica,  or  little  measures,  isolated  one  from  another, 
scattered  throughout  and  embedded  in  non-living  matter. 
On  an  average,  these  minute  modica  of  living  matter  or 
protoplasm  are  not  much  more  than  the  three-thousandth 
of  an  inch  in  diameter,  but  occasionally  reach  the  one  two- 
hundredth  and  larger ;  and  their  true  or  typical  form  is 
manifestly  spherical.  From  the  center  of  these  small 
spherules  life  is  exhibited.  In  consistency,  the  living 
substance  is  semi-fluid  ;  it  is  so  nearly  transparent  as  to 
be  deemed  colorless ;  and  it  does  not  give  off  odorous  par- 
ticles. As  above  remarked,  it  is  ordinary  matter,  oxygen, 
hydrogen,  nitrogen,  carbon,  etc.,  and  the  cause  of  its  pecu- 
liar behavior,  in  the  living  condition,  is  in  all  probability 
the  manner  in  which  the  particles  are  combined,  and  their 
arrangement  and  relations  one  with  another. 

More  profoundly,  when  we  seek  to  know  why  living 
matter  always  assumes  the  form  of  and  exists  always  in 
the  small  spherical  integers,  termed  "cells,"  we  are 
brought  to  contemplate  a  new  law  of  matter  which  appar- 
ently acts  counter  to  gravitation,  or,  as  is  more  likely, 
prevails  upon  an  interior  plane  of  matter  within  that  on 


The  Message  of  Science.  19 

which  gravitation  acts.  It  is  the  sway  and  prevalence  of 
gravitation  over  ordinary  matter  which  causes  the  world 
of  matter,  as  we  see  it,  to  appear  lifeless  and  inert.  But 
in  protoplasm,  pure  and  unalloyed,  we  behold  a  law  of 
matter,  find  expression,  subversive  of  gravity,  prevalent 
over  it  and  transfiguring  ordinary  matter  to  living  matter 
in  spite  of  gravity,  so  to  speak.  This  may  seem  a  bold 
statement.  Life,  indeed,  has  been  held  by  many  biologists 
to  be  a  corelative  of  gravitation,  a  cognate  and  derivative 
mode  of  the  universal  energy  of  matter.  Cognate,  indeed, 
it  no  doubt  is  ;  derivative  also  in  the  loose  sense  of  being 
aided  and  facilitated  by  it  in  all  the  larger  forms  of  ter- 
restrial life ;  for  it  is  assuredly  not  the  intention  here  to 
convey  the  idea  that  the  ordinary  functions  of  animals  are 
carried  on  contrary  to  gravity  or  chemism.  The  writer 
ventures,  however,  to  set  forth  the  conception  that  within 
a  normal  "  cell  "  of  living  matter  there  is  an  expression 
of  energy  not  derived  from  gravitation,  but  superior  to 
it ;  as  if  emanating  from  an  inner  seat  of  energy, 
as  if  acting  upon  matter  at  a  different  angle  or  point 
d'appui.  Such  an  opinion  by  no  means  conflicts  with 
the  monistic  conception  of  energy.  It  is  meant  merely 
to  set  forth  that  life  is  not  the  immediate  derivative  of 
gravitation,  or  chemism,  which  many  physical  philosophers 
have  been  inclined  to  consider  it,  but  rather  a  static  prop- 
erty of  matter  which  antedates  gravity,  and,  in  the  inti- 
mate composition  of  matter,  outranks  it. 


2O  Natural  Salvation. 

Indeed,  the  truer  view  of  this  great  question  is  probably 
that  life  finds  but  an  irregular,  erratic  expression  in  the 
superficies  of  the  terrestrial  globe,  where  gravity  and  the 
grosser  modes  of  universal  energy  prevail  as  a  rule. 
Yet  the  conception  will  be  found  to  grow  in  the  mind  of 
the  student  of  living  matter,  that  this  wonderful  static 
property  is  a  very  universal  property ;  in  a  word,  that  all 
matter  is  sentient  at  bottom ;  and  that  its  apparent  insen- 
tience,  or  lifelessness  and  inertia,  as  seen  on  the  earth,  is 
less  a  natural  than  an  unnatural  and  fortuitous  condition 
into  which  it  has  fallen  from  the  peculiar  recoils  incident 
to  planetary  formation. 

This  view  need  not  incline  the  student  to  entertain 
pantheistic  conceptions  of  matter,  or  drift  away  to  extreme 
opinions  as  to  a  universal  mind  inherent  in  nature :  an 
ocean  of  omniscient  intellect,  from  which  our  "souls  "  are 
stray  driblets.  On  the  contrary,  the  entire  trend  and 
drift  of  biological  science  are  to  the  effect  that  the  primary 
static  property  of  matter  is  sentience  only  in  the  sense 
that  the  raw  flax  is  damask,  that  the  crude  ore  is  a 
steel  warship,  and  that  in  the  great  tracts  of  universal 
matter  there  is  nothing  more  intelligent  than  the  elements 
of  intelligence;  even  as  in  "protoplasm"  of  lowly  grade 
there  is  little  save  the  capacity  to  feel.  Be  it  remem- 
bered, too,  that  there  is  now,  probably,  no  "protoplasm" 
existent  on  the  earth's  surface  of  such  lowly  grade, 
such  archaic  simplicity  upon  the  scale  of  intelligence,  as 


The  Message  of  Science.  21 

that  which  first  stirred  on  the  early  shores  of  the  azoic 
oceans. 

As  the  student  examines  those  wonderful  little  integers, 
the  "  cells,"  day  by  day,  the  inquiry  constantly  presents 
itself,  Why  does  the  living  matter  adopt  this  form  ?  Why 
does  it  live  in  these  little  globules  of  uniform  size  ?  —  for 
although  the  size  of  cells  differs  considerably  relatively  to 
each  other  in  different  tissues  and  situations,  the  difference 
is  mainly  within  certain  definite  limits ;  and  the  general 
type  and  form  are  unmistakable  and  apparently  un- 
changeable. 

Why  does  protoplasm  exist  in  such  small  measures  of 
substance,  each  scarcely  more  than  a  pin's  point?  Why 
do  its  "  cells  "  fail,  since  they  are  constantly  growing,  to 
attain  larger  size,  an  inch  or  more  in  diameter?  Why  do 
they  not  coalesce  in  the  tissues  into  one  sentient  working 
mass?  And  why,  on  the  contrary,  do  they  constantly 
divide,  when  these  small  dimensions  are  reached,  and  be- 
come dormant,  die  even,  rather  than  transgress  them? 
These  are  inquiries  which  the  student  will  find  often  re- 
curring as  he  observes  cell  life.  The  idea  conveyed  from 
the  totality  of  such  questionings  is  one  of  a  certain  ever- 
present  barrier  to  protoplasmic  life,  or  a  constantly  re- 
stricting law  which  makes  life  on  the  earth  possible  only 
in  this  small  form,  or  type.  Some  stress  of  terrestrial 
matter  appears  to  confine  life  to  this  minute  expression. 
This  little  cell  is  the  only  way  in  which  life  upwells 


22  Natural  Salvation. 

from  the  profound  depths  of  matter.  For  it  is  apparent 
that  the  cell  is  but  the  form,  the  tiny  thread-like  channel 
from  a  deep-lying  stratum,  through  which  some  very  eso- 
teric or  final  property  of  matter  flickers  up. 

So  great  confusion  of  thought  has  often  been  exhibited 
on  this  subject  of  cell  consentience  that  it  is  important  to 
set  the  matter  in  a  clear  light.  In  the  cell-of-life  we  have 
presented  the  spectacle  of  a  thousandth  of  a  grain  of  mat- 
ter—  oxygen,  hydrogen,  nitrogen,  sulphur,  phosphorus  — 
which  has  set  itself  to  live,  set  up  for  itself  as  against  the 
rest  of  the  universe,  stepped  out  from  its  former  relation- 
ship and  allegiance  to  other  matter,  and  started  a  new 
little  world  of  its  own.  For  that  is  what  a  living  cell 
really  is :  a  minute  portion  of  universal  matter  which  has 
withdrawn  from  the  rest  and  set  up  autonomy.  The  laws 
of  matter  no  longer  control  this  thousandth  of  a  grain  of 
matter  as  formerly. 

In  every  animal  and  in  every  cell  there  is  always  matter, 
a  large  per  cent,  of  its  bulk,  which  is  not  living,  and  hence 
inert ;  but  the  really  living  portion  of  the  cell  carries  it- 
self in  defiance  of  gravitation.  True,  it  is  borne  on  by  the 
earth  on  its  orbit  and  revolves  with  it ;  none  the  less  it 
is  able  to  direct  chemical  action  for  its  own  behoof  and 
combine  forces  to  overcome  gravity  when  it  wishes  to 
climb  hills  or  trees.  In  a  word,  it  fights  gravitation  to  do 
as  it  pleases,  and  succeeds.  So  long  as  it  lives  and  is  not 
crushed  out,  it  is  to  a  degree  independent  and  self-directive. 


The  Message  of  Science.  23 

The  present  development  of  life  on  the  earth  began  in 
the  age  which  geologists  term  the  Silurian ;  but  the 
presence  of  graphite  in  the  Laurentian,  or  "  azoic  "  rocks 
renders  it  not  incredible  that  there  was  a  previous  life 
development  which  terminated,  or  was  followed  by  a 
period  of  high  temperature. 

But  to  return  to  what  is  known,  keeping  it  separate 
from  conjecture,  we  find  that  low  forms  of  unicellular 
life  were  existing  on  the  earth  many  millions  of  years 
ago.  Geology  affords  the  evidence  of  this,  though  the 
exact  number  of  millions  of  years  is  still  debatable.  That 
is  not  material  to  our  purpose,  however ;  it  was  a  very 
long  time  ago.  Fire,  water,  and  unicellular  life  have 
wrought  together  to  make  the  earth's  surface  what  we 
find  it  to-day.  But  geologists  are  agreed  that  there  was 
an  azoic,  or  lifeless  age,  followed  by  an  epoch  when 
protozoons  —  vegetable  and  animal  cells  of  life,  the 
monera,  protamoebidse,  diatoms,  algae,  myxopods,  rhizo- 
pods,  ciliata,  flagellata,  et  al, — had  appeared;  unicellular 
creatures  from  one  ten-thousandth  to  a  hundredth  of  an 
inch  in  diameter. 

For  millions,  perhaps  hundreds  of  millions  of  years, 
certain  of  these  protozoons  were  the  sole  inhabitants  of  the 
earth  which  was  fit  for  no  higher  form  of  life ;  or,  if  fit, 
no  higher  form  had  developed.  Nothing  more  graphically 
illustrates  the  wealth  of  time  at  Nature's  disposal,  or  the 
fact  that  the  course  of  nature  cannot  be  judged  by  human 


24  Natural  Salvation. 

standards.  Metazoons,  creatures  of  higher,  more  complex 
organization,  were  to  appear  on  the  earth ;  yet  through  all 
these  millions  of  years  no  sign  or  semblance  of  them  was 
visible.  Were  three  million  centuries  of  unicellular  life 
necessary  to  prepare  the  earth's  surface  for  metazoons? 
The  question  is  idle.  Every  measure  of  our  estimation 
of  nature  breaks  down  on  extended  application.  We 
have  no  code  of  morals  for  nature  and  can  have  none, 
for  nature  is  eternal,  and  man  a  being  of  yesterdays  and 
to-morrows. 

The  point  to  make  here  pertains  merely  to  the  fact  that 
for  ages  and  epochs,  to  which  all  subsequent  time  is  but 
as  an  hour  to  a  day,  a  lowly  unicellular  life  was  all  that 
the  earth  bore. 

Observers  from  afar,  if  such  there  were,  might  well 
have  concluded  that  there  would  be  no  further  develop- 
ment ;  thus  other  planets  appear  to  our  terrestrial  astron- 
omers ;  the  epoch  of  life,  or  of  the  higher  life-forms,  has 
not  yet  arrived,  or  has  passed. 


Then  occurred  a  new  departure  in  terrestrial  life,  an 
innovation,  but  when,  how  early,  or  how  late  in  that 
first  long  epoch  of  unicellular  life  we  do  not  know. 
Some  time  during  those  millions  of  the  earth's  unhistoric 
revolutions  an  innovation  on  unicellular  life  began. 
From  accident  of  the  environvent,  or,  perchance,  from 


The  Message  of  Science.  25 

malformation,  two  or  more  cells  began  to  live  united 
together,  and  to  act  in  unison  —  the  earliest,  metazoon  ! 
Or,  as  some  biologists  conjecture,  an  unusually  tough  cell 
wall,  or  membrane,  may  have  restricted  the  ordinary 
course  of  multiplication  by  fission.  The  offspring  or 
increase  of  a  certain  protozoon  may  have  been  unable  to 
separate  from  the  parent  cell,  to  lead  an  individual  life 
apart,  as  formerly,  and  thus  two  or  more  protozoa  may 
have  come  to  live  together,  in  sentient,  protoplasmic 
contact  as  one  life,  and  to  act  for  a  common  interest. 

It  is  not  essential  to  our  argument  to  show  how  meta- 
zoons  began.  The  point  made  is,  that  they  came  into  exist- 
ence and,  beyond  doubt,  originated  from  the  unicellular 
life  which  antedated  them.  In  some  way  two  or  more 
cells  contrived  to  merge  their  hitherto  separate  lives  in 
one.  Their  separate  sentiences  were  pooled,  so  to  speak,  in 
one  consentient  life. 

This  was  accomplished  by  means  of  close  protoplasmic 
contact,  when  the  two  hitherto  separate  cell  lives  coalesced, 
like  two  drops  of  water  on  a  window-pane.  For  it  is 
possible  for  two  cells  to  live  as  one  and  form  a  single  life 
or  self-conscious  existence,  if  there  is  close  protoplasmic 
connection  between  the  two,  that  is  to  say,  if  they  touch 
each  other,  or  are  joined  together  by  one  or  more  threads 
of  the  sentient  living  matter.  When  this  occurs,  the  two 
cells  may  havek  one  common  life,  or  soul,  in  place  of  the 
two  lives  previous  to  the  union.  One  common  life  may 


26  Natural  Salvation. 

take  the  place  of  two ;  and  yet  the  two  cell  substances  do 
not  become  confluent  or  coalesce ;  they  merely  touch  and 
remain  separate  seats,  or  fountains  of  sentience ;  it  is  the 
two  sentiences  only  which  unite;  as  when  two  springs 
which  issue  at  points  near  together  combine  their  waters 
in  one  rill.  The  two  cell  lives  combine  in  one  stream, 
but  the  cells  themselves  remain  distinct,  separate  founts 
of  life.  The  tremendous  significance  of  this  fact  is  little 
recognized  or  understood  as  yet.  It  subverts  the  present 
theological  doctrine  of  the  human  soul.  It  demonstrates 
that  the  intellect  of  man,  the  human  personality,  is  com- 
posite and  dissoluble. 

At  the  outset,  however,  certain  hasty  conclusions  which 
have  sometimes  misled  investigators  should  be  avoided. 
The  bodies  of  the  higher  animals  are  something  more  than 
confederations  of  unicellular  life ;  that  is  to  say,  they  have 
not  come  directly  from  a  banding  together  of  cells  that 
once  lived  separately.  The  animal  organism  develops 
from  a  single  cell  in  the  egg.  All  the  millions  of  cells  in 
the  various  tissues  issue  forth,  seriatim,  from  this  one  re- 
productive cell,  which  seems  to  contain  representative 
particles,  reproductive  molecules,  or  "biophors,"  and 
"  determinants,"  corresponding  to  every  tissue  cell  of  the 
parent  organism.  We  have  by  no  means  sounded  the 
depths  of  this  latter  problem,  as  yet.  One  conjecture  is, 
that  the  entire  animal  organism,  in  corelation  with  its 
generative  tissue,  fructifies  in  a  species  of  sub-unicellular 


The  Message  of  Science.  27 

life ;  a  germ  life  as  far  below  the  tissue  cell  life  in  size 
and  bulk  as  the  cell  is  smaller  than  the  whole  animal 
organism.  The  cell  would  thus  appear  to  extrude  a 
species  of  minute  offspring  which  are  assembled,  as  a 
colony,  in  the  ovum. 

Animals  are  grand  communities  of  cells  and  something 
more,  the  result  of  long  organization  and  new  methods  of 
cell  life.  But  this  distinction  does  not  essentially  detract 
from  the  importance  which  attaches  to  the  phenomenon 
disclosed  to  us  when  two  cells  combine  to  live  one  life.  I 
have  termed  this  a  new  departure,  yet  must  not  be  under- 
stood to  assert  that  it  took  place  suddenly,  as  being  the 
beginning  or  end  of  an  epoch,  or  as  indicating  a  "creative 
act,"  that  mental  lapse  to  which  certain  venerable  savants 
are  so  prone. 

Here,  too,  it  will  be  well  to  enlarge  the  common  con- 
ception of  a  "  cell."  We  are  apt  to  think  of  unicellular 
life  as  being  very  low  and  simple,  far  down  toward  the 
primary  molecules  and  "  atoms  "  of  matter.  Whereas  the 
truth  appears  to  be  that  the  "  cell "  is  a  relatively  huge 
and  vastly  complex  organism;  and  that  the  unicellular 
life  of  the  globe  is  an  evolution  of  a  most  hoary  antiquity ; 
herewith  also  this  other  fact  should  be  associated  and 
kept  in  mind,  namely,  that  in  the  bodies  of  metazoons, 
in  plants  and  trees,  the  unicellular  type  of  life,  this 
ancient  life  of  the  Silurian  ages,  still  persists.  In  fact,  it 
will  hardly  be  too  much  to  say  that  the  unicellular  is  the 


28  Natural  Salvation. 

only  real,  distinct  type  of  life  which  exists,  or  has  ever 
existed  on  the  earth's  surface.  Since  all  the  metazoons 
are  but  more  or  less  well-organized  and  well-perfected 
confraternities  of  cell  life,  where  the  individual  lives  of 
millions  of  cells  are  unified  in  a  single,  larger  personality. 

Many  of  the  polyzoa  are  suggestive  of  the  manner  in 
which  multicellular  organisms  started.  In  paludicella  we 
find  cells  joined  together,  as  joints  or  sections  of  the 
branches  of  a  minute  tree-like  growth,  attached  to  stones 
in  streams.  It  is  a  tree  in  miniature  ;  the  cells  grow 
forth,  one  beyond  another,  offspring  above  parent  cell,  but 
otherwise  have  little  connection  one  with  another.  It  is 
simply  an  arboriform  colony,  or  zoarium.  Other  polyzoa, 
like  mucronella,  form  mat-like  disks  on  stones  in  water, 
the  cells  lying  in  contact  merely. 

In  certain  of  the  zoaria  of  polyzoa,  however,  a  con- 
siderable degree  of  individualization  is  exhibited  with 
division  of  labor  among  the  cells.  In  christatella  mucedo 
the  cells  not  only  adhere,  but  the  whole  colony  crawls 
with  considerable  facility  from  one  water  weed  to  another. 
Kinetoskias  is  another  zoarium  where  the  colony  has 
arrived  at  the  point  of  differentiation  of  function.  Adeona 
presents  an  equally  interesting  example  of  a  simple  colony 
of  unicells  on  its  way  toward  a  many-celled  organism. 

Among  the  hydrozoa,  siphonophora  affords  an  example 
where  a  floating  colony  of  unicells  has  taken  definite  form 
and  organized  its  individual  cells  to  work  for  the  common 


The  Message  of  Science.  29 

good.  In  siphonophora,  as,  indeed,  in  hundreds  of  other 
instances,  the  beginnings  of  multicellular  mind  are  appar- 
ent. That  is  to  say,  there  is  present  not  only  the  cell 
intelligence  —  that  which  pertains  to  all  cells  —  but  that 
larger  intelligence  which  comes  into  existence  from  the 
consentience  of  the  entire  colony  —  the  pooling  of  the 
separate  cell  sentiences  in  one  larger  intelligence. 

This  habit  among  protozoons  of  colonizing  —  however 
it  originated  —  opened  the  way  to  metazoons.  Often  the 
colony  grows  up  around  one  mother  cell,  whose  offspring 
instead  of  dispersing  remain  loosely  attached  together. 
Of  such  agglomerations  anthrophysa  vegetans  is  a  good 
instance. 

In  other  instances  the  envelope,  or  cuticle,  of  the 
mother  cell  expands  and  enlarges,  forming  a  sac  which 
contains  the  entire  colony  for  a  considerable  time,  till  the 
reproductive  power  of  the  parent  cell  is  exhausted. 
Eventually  the  sac  bursts  and  the  group  disperses.  Many 
of  the  flagellates  exhibit  this  phenomenon,  the  parent 
organism  continuing  to  move  about  after  becoming  a 
colony  instead  of  a  single  cell. 

In.  gonium  pectorale,  a  volvocine  of  stagnant  fresh  waters, 
a  colony  of  sixteen  offspring  cells  adhere  laterally  to  each 
other,  in  the  form  of  a  minute,  rectangular  plaque  of  a 
light  green  color.  Pandorina,  on  the  other  hand,  gives 
birth  to  either  sixteen  or  thirty-two  offspring,  which  live 
for  a  time  in  a  species  of  globular  colony,  inside  a  thin 


30  Natural  Salvation. 

envelope,  through  which  each  cell  thrusts  out  two  flagella. 
While  living  as  a  colony,  these  sixteen  or  thirty- two  cells 
act  together,  as  if  actuated  by  a  common  impulse,  moving 
their  flagella  in  unison  to  propel  the  colony.  It  changes 
direction,  tacks  suddenly,  and  otherwise  affords  evidence 
that  all  the  cells  are  acting  together  as  one.  Either  there 
is  a  sentient  contact  which  serves  to  enable  the  sixteen 
separate  cells  to  act  as  one,  or  else  a  temporary  species  of 
nervous  system,  consisting  of  filamentous  processes  thrust 
forth  from  cell  to  cell. 

In  the  oft-cited  instance  of  volvox  globator,  the  colony  is 
of  more  complicated  structure  and  forms  a  large  green 
ball,  to  the  surface  of  which  the  individual  cells  adhere  in 
great  numbers,  as  many  as  twelve  thousands  to  a  ball 
having  been  counted.  In  this  case  they  appear  to  touch 
each  other  and  are  each  provided  with  two  flagella  which 
project  through  the  membrane.  Here  each  cell  appears  to 
be  a  free  agent  within  its  own  envelope,  but  projects  pro- 
toplasmic threads  or  filaments,  like  telephonic  wires,  into 
its  neighbors,  by  means  of  which  a  network  of  consentient 
communication  is  established.  At  an  internal  signal  all 
the  thousands  of  flagella  swing  in  harmony  like  oars,  and 
the  ball  moves  from  point  to  point.  It  is  clear  that  some- 
thing analogous  to  a  nervous  system  is  here  present,  even 
though  of  an  ephemeral  nature,  consisting  of  filaments 
which  can  be  thrust  out  and  withdrawn  at  will. 

In  the  dicecian  volvox  the  male  colony  remains  apart 


The  Message  of  Science.  31 

from  the  female  cellules,  except  at  time  of  fecundation, 
when  both  colonies  break  up,  scatter,  and  presently  conju- 
gate in  pairs  and  groups. 

Colonies  of  protozoons  which  come  from  a  single  parent 
cell  present  some  analogy  with  a  multicellular  animal 
organism,  which  also  develops  from  a  single  egg-cell. 
The  way,  however,  from  a  colony  of  protista  to  the  organ- 
ism of  a  vertebrate  animal  is  long  and,  in  its  aetiology, 
but  little  understood. 

The  first  metazoons  were  clearly  temporary  makeshifts, 
owing  to  stress  of  accidental  conditions.  It  is  likely, 
indeed,  that  they  had  often  occurred  for  millions  of  years, 
occurred  thousands  of  times,  but  had  died  out,  or  pro- 
gressed no  further  than  the  polyzoa  we  see  at  present 
time,  owing  to  unvarying  conditions,  flood  and  drought, 
heat  and  cold.  But  at  some  time  one  or  more  of  these 
unions  of  cells  chanced  to  survive  longer  and  took  more 
permanent  form,  sufficient  permanence  to  carry  it  on  and 
set  up  a  new  mode  of  life  by  organization  —  that  organiza- 
tion and  differentiation  of  cell  function  which  was  to  play 
so  grand  a  part  in  the  future. 

Space  and  a  desire  to  make  the  argument  continuous 
prevent  more  extended  enumeration  of  such  primitive 
unions  of  unicellular  life.  But  one  has  only  to  look  abroad 
on  the  face  of  nature  to  see  conclusive  proof  of  the  posi- 
tion here  taken.  In  every  tree,  shrub,  and  plant,  in  every 
animal  that  walks,  every  bird  and  insect  that  flies,  we 


3*  Natural  Salvation. 

behold  an  agglomerated  organized  mass,  or  congeries,  of 
cells,  each  filling  its  place  and  doing  its  appropriate  part 
in  a  cell  commonwealth.  There  may  be  thousands  of 
cells  in  the  plant  or  insect,  or  there  may  be  millions  in 
the  tree  or  the  animal.  The  proof,  we  say,  is  on  all  sides. 
Tree,  animal,  insect,  alike,  are  examples  of  this  principle 
of  e  pluribus  unum,  for  the  common  good  of  all. 

We  wish  here  merely  to  show  the  manner  in  which  the 
metazoons  started,  and  the  significance  of  the  act  when 
two  or  more  protozoons  unite  to  live  one  life  and  become 
one  larger  self. 

No  claim  is  set  up  here,  that  we  know  at  present,  from 
what  colonies  or  unions  of  primitive  unicells  the  verte- 
brata  were  developed.  Nature,  indeed,  appears  to  have 
performed  many  strange  experiments  in  multicellular  or- 
ganisms, long-extended  and  horrible  experiments,  which 
go  far  to  convince  us  that  we  must  not  deify  or  even 
personify  nature.  For  nature  is  elemental  and  imper- 
sonal. The  unicells  first  organized  in  uncouth  and  savage 
forms, 

"  Dragons  of  the  prime  that  tare  each  other  in  their  slime." 

Dinosaur,  megatherium,  and  mastodon  roared  and  battled 
through  ages  that  to  man  are  incomprehensible. 

"  A  monstrous  eft  was  at  one  time  lord  and  master  of  earth, 
For  him  the  bright  sun  shone  and  his  river  billowing  ran." 


The  Message  of  Science.  33 

Man's  hundred  thousand  years  are  but  as  a  span  to  the 
era  of  vertebrate  monsters  and  monstrosities,  while  earth's 
young  unicells  were  making  their  first  tremendous  efforts 
at  organization. 

But  when  two  or  more  cells  unite  to  live  together  as 
one,  each  has  first  to  surrender,  either  temporarily  or  per- 
manently, its  own  self-conscious  personality ;  and  then  as 
a  merger  of  all  these  surrendered  personalities  there 
ensues  a  larger,  grander  self  about  a  new  axis  of  self- 
consciousness. 

The  most  perfect  example  of  this  self-surrender  and 
resultant,  grand  consentience  is  exhibited  in  the  brain  of 
man.  Here  temporarily  during  the  day  some  sixty  mil- 
lions of  "  cells  "  extend  filamentous  processes  and,  all 
taking  hold  of  hands,  so  to  speak,  surrender  each  its  self- 
consciousness  and  autonomy  to  form  the  human  intellect. 
From  this  grand  surrender,  and  at  the  instant  it  is 
made,  there  flashes  forth  the  consentient  human  person- 
ality, the  "soul  of  man."  It  is  done  as  if  by  electric 
contact.  This  intellect  or  "  soul "  is  the  union  of  these 
sixty  millions  of  brain  cell  lives ;  they  surrender  self  to 
live  as  one. 

But  in  the  brain  this  is  but  a  temporary  self-surrender. 
Owing  probably  to  the  severe  vital  draught  which  the 
consentience  makes  on  the  individual  cell  the  human 
intellect  cannot  remain  constant  or  continuous.  There 


34  Natural  Salvation. 

must  be  respite  and  recuperation  for  the  constituent  cells. 
Accordingly  we  find  that  after  ten  or  fifteen  hours  the 
consentient  strain  is  relieved ;  the  union  is  disrupted. 
Sleep  ensues.  Suddenly,  as  suddenly  as  it  began,  the 
brain  cells  let  go  hands.  The  filaments  are  retracted. 
Contact  is  broken.  Each  cell  resumes  its  individual  life, 
becomes  itself  again,  self-conscious,  and  attends  to  its  own 
personal  affairs  —  nutrition,  elimination  of  waste  products, 
rest,  growth. 

But  the  instant  the  cells  resume  self -life,  the  human 
intellect  has  ceased,  as  when  electric  contact  is  broken, 
unconsciousness  supervenes. 

Why,  it  may  be  asked,  why  and  how  did  the  first  two 
or  more  protozoons  come  to  unite  their  self-lives  in  one 
larger  self  ?  From  what  seems  accident  of  the  environ- 
ment, on  the  objective  side ;  and  for  greater  comfort,  ease, 
and  safety,  on  the  subjective  side ;  or  rather  when  accident, 
or  "  the  law  of  chance,"  had  initiated  the  innovation,  the 
subjective  comfort  which  resulted  from  it  led  to  a  volun- 
tary and  wilful  continuance  of  the  new  mode  of  living. 

For  by  thus  uniting,  a  division  of  the  hard  labor  of 
living  was  possible;  the  single  cell  was  no  longer  com- 
pelled to  face  the  world  alone  and  perform  all  the  various 
kinds  of  labor  which  the  act  of  living  necessitated.  After 
combining,  one  cell  could  do  one  kind  of  work  and  con- 
fine itself  to  that,  and  another,  another  kind.  One  cell, 
or  group  of  cells,  could  attend  to  locomotion,  as  in  volvox. 


The  Message  of  Science.  35 

another  to  securing  food,  and  still  another  to  digestion 
and  assimilation  of  the  food. 

Soon,  indeed,  one  cell,  or  group  of  cells,  in  the  union, 
took  upon  itself  the  office  of  spying  out  food,  or  sighting 
danger  and  notifying  the  motive  group  to  move  forward 
swiftly,  or  to  beat  a  hasty  retreat.  This  spy  cell,  or  group 
of  cells,  soon  assumed  the  leadership.  In  time,  complete 
differentiation  of  labor-function  was  effected.  The  loco- 
motive or  muscle  group  not  only  performed  no  other  kind 
of  labor,  but  became  unable  to  perform  other.  Its  internal 
organization  conformed  to  this  want  of  the  union.  So  of 
the  group  which  seized,  or  digested  food,  and  preemi- 
nently so  of  the  spy  cell  group  which  erelong  devoted 
itself  exclusively  to  discernment,  intelligent  decisions  and 
a  general  directorate  and  protectorate  of  the  other  groups. 

This  apparent  development  of  metazoons  from  proto- 
zoons,  of  so  great  significance  in  the  terrestrial  scheme  of 
life,  was  set  forth  by  this  author  some  years  since  a  little 
more  in  detail. 

"Very  soon  after  creatures  composed  of  many  cells 
(metazoons)  were  developed  from  groups  of  unicellular 
life,  the  necessities  of  locomotion  in  the  struggle  for  food 
led  to  the  differentiation  of  certain  tracts  of  cells  as  bone 
and  muscle,  and  finally  to  the  development  of  the  entire 
apparatus  for  mechanical  movements. 

"Simultaneously,  too,  another  peculiar  species  of  dif- 
ferentiation began  to  be  necessary,  namely,  a  special  tis- 


36  Natural  Salvation. 

sue,  whose  office  should  be  that  of  intercommunication 
between  the  different  associated  cells  and  tracts  of  cells 
which  were  thus  assuming  more  and  more  diverse  offices, 
and  becoming  somewhat  different  in  character,  one  from 
another.  It  was  thus  and  for  this  reason  that  a  nervous 
system  began  to  be  needed  and  hence  to  develop ;  for  the 
plastic,  living  substance  has  always  shown  a  faculty  of 
adapting  itself  to  widely  variant  functions  and  modes  of 
living. 

"  Certain  cells  began  to  take  up  the  business  of  receiv- 
ing sensory  influences  from  outlying  cells  which  were 
hard  pressed  or  in  want  of  food,  and  of  transmitting  such 
sensory  influences  to  contiguous  cells.  In  short,  certain 
lines  of  internal  cells  began  to  take  upon  themselves  the 
task  of  conveying  the  sensations  of  others  from  one  tract 
of  the  cellular  mass  to  another  tract,  and  of  interpreting 
the  sensation  received  from  one  tract  to  the  comprehen- 
sion of  the  sentience  of  another  tract,  so  that  action, 
within  its  sphere  of  action,  would  ensue  in  the  second 
tract.  In  addition  to  their  own  sentient  economy,  these 
lines  of  cells  in  the  incipient  nervous  system  took  up  the 
function  of  common  carriers  of  sense,  and  also  the  office 
of  interpreters  of  the  sensory  language  of  one  order  of 
cells  —  if  I  may  borrow  the  figure  —  to  the  different 
language  of  another  order. 

"  Thus,  humbly,  as  we  conclude  from  observation  of 
low  forms  of  life,  did  the  nervous  system,  or  tissue  of  in- 


The  Message  of  Science.  37 

telligence,  begin  to  develop.  Primarily  there  was  but 
one  or  two  simple  thread-like  lines  of  cells  attempting  the 
office  of  transmitting  feeling,  and  succeeding  indifferently 
at  first ;  but  as  animals  increased  in  size,  the  business  of 
telegraphing  sensation  grew,  and  a  net- work  of  lines  was 
developed.  Sensation  was  going  both  ways,  and  soon  the 
necessity  of  a  common  center  to  which  sensory  influences 
could  be  brought,  and  thence  distributed  to  their  proper 
destination,  was  forced  upon  the  nascent,  sense-conveying 
cells,  and  a  ganglion,  or  little  brain,  came  into  existence. 
The  confusion,  too,  resulting  from  counter-currents  of 
feeling  soon  led  to  the  formation  of  double  lines,  one  for 
transmitting  sensation  inward,  the  other  for  transmission 
outward ;  and  thus  the  divisions  of  sensory  and  motor 
nerves  were  inaugurated  to  and  from  the  little  brain 
center,  which  presently  assumed  the  function  of  deciding 
upon  the  merits  of  transmitted  sensations,  and  responding 
to  them  by  a  message  from  its  own  sensibility. 

"  Nerve  ganglia  multiplied  as  animals  increased  in  bulk 
and  attempted  larger  movements ;  and  in  time,  to  avoid 
confusion  and  get  the  organic  business  done,  one  ganglion 
was  obliged  to  take  the  lead  and  keep  order  among  the 
other  ganglia,  to  decide  between  them  when  they  got  at 
variance,  and  generally  to  take  the  office  of  head  ganglion. 

"  Thus,  in  time,  a  larger  and  capitally  important  gan- 
glion was  raised  up  into  prominence  to  perform  the  func- 
tion of  oyer  and  terminer,  a  cerebellum,  and  finally  a 


38  Natural  Salvation. 

cerebrum,  — a  mass  of  highly  organized  cells  which  have 
from  long  use  and  inherited  development  the  capacity  for 
intelligent  perception  and  thought." 

Without  any  attempt  to  present  a  consecutive  line  of 
examples  to  illustrate  the  progressive  development  of  the 
cerebro-spinal  system,  the  above  outline  indicates  the  prin- 
ciple upon  which  this  group  of  cells  has  come  forward  to 
occupy  its  present  grand  prominence  as  exponents  of 
intelligence. 

In  treating  of  the  cells  of  the  brain  as  individual,  living 
creatures,  it  may  be  well  to  set  forth  more  explicitly  what 
their  status  of  intelligence  probably  is,  and  explain  how 
far  they  may  be  regarded  as  sentient.  It  is  not  claimed 
for  any  unicellular  creature  that  it  possesses  rational 
powers  to  such  extent  as  is  evinced  by  an  organized  tract 
of  cells  like  that  of  the  human  brain.  For  in  the  human 
brain  we  find  a  great  number  of  cells  of  four  or  more 
varieties,  devoted  some  to  memory,  some  to  reason  or  the 
comparison  of  experiences,  some  to  vision,  some  to  hearing, 
and  some  to  the  estimation  of  the  odors  and  flavors ;  and 
it  is  the  sentience  and  experience  of  them  all  which  is 
combined  in  the  human  intellect.  Yet  from  observations 
of  unicellular  life  we  find,  as  in  the-  case  of  ciliates,  that  it 
is  quite  possible  for  a  single  cell,  no  larger  than  many  of 
the  brain  cells,  to  possess  not  only  sentience,  but  to  acquire 
the  data  of  memory,  and  to  act  from  its  previous  experi- 
ence. Many  forms  of  unicellular  life,  indeed,  behave 


The  Message  of  Science.  39 

rationally  ;  nor  is  there  reason  to  suppose  that  the  cells  of 
the  brain  are  less  capable  of  perception  and  of  memory. 
In  the  brain,  however,  cells  of  different  tracts  are  con- 
cerned with  experiences  of  particular  kinds,  some  record- 
ing the  data  of  vision,  others  the  data  of  hearing,  and  still 
others  collating  and  comparing  such  data.  It  is  probable 
that  a  cell  of  the  tract  or  group  in  the  area  of  vision,  for 
example,  is  largely  occupied  with  depiction  of  visual 
imagery,  and  becomes  a  kind  of  living,  sentient  specialist, 
or  expert  in  colors  and  scenery. 

None  the  less  it  is  a  sentient  creature,  with  its  own  in- 
ternal economy  of  nutrition  and  growth.  In  a  word,  it  is 
a  sentient  self.  It  perceives,  lives  and  acts  from  its  own 
personal  point  of  view,  for  its  own  behoof  and  welfare. 
This  much  is  quite  certain.  It  is  a  sentient  creature  and 
within  its  limited  sphere  has  acquired  a  kind  of  wisdom 
of  its  own.  More  we  cannot  predicate  of  the  individual 
cell.  It  is  a  pygmy  of  a  limited  degree  of  intelligence. 

Nor  does  our  argument  claim  that  the  protozoons  first 
banded  together  from  intelligent  foresight  as  to  the  result 
of  union.  The  beginnings  of  metazoic  life  were  proba- 
bly accidental  per  se.  But  the  results  of  union  and  divi- 
sion of  labor  followed  quite  the  same,  and  it  is  from  these 
actual  results  that  our  conclusions  are  drawn.  By  union 
of  their  hitherto  separate  sentiences  the  cells  evolved  a 
higher  kind  of  sentience,  a  nous^  a  soul,  developed  to  a 


40  Natural  Salvation. 

higher  degree  of  intelligence,  from  the  exercise  of  which 
each  cell  of  the  organic  union  was  grandly  benefited  in 
the  matter  of  food  and  protection,  and  is  enabled  to 
become  a  participator  and  beneficiary  of  mind. 

It  may  be  added  that  the  later  physiology  portrays  the 
connection  and  intercommunication  of  cells  in  metazoons 
as  based  on  and  maintained  by  currents  of  "ions," 
liberated  and  set  in  motion  by  the  vital  processes,  and  de- 
picts life  itself  as  arising  from  the  reciprocal  action  of 
these  biogenetic  units  of  matter. 

The  passage  from  the  unicellular  to  organized  multi- 
cellular  forms  of  life,  from  protozoa  to  metazoa,  was  pri- 
marily effected  by  simple  combinations  of  cells  and 
varying  of  their  functions.  It  was  thus  that  the  animal 
organism  originated.  The  question  of  importance  next  to 
be  asked  is,  What  was  gained  by  it  ?  Of  what  use  was  it  ? 
What  advantage  accrued  from  it  to  the  cells  themselves 
which,  from  the  strict  biological  point  of  view,  are  not 
only  the  first,  but  the  only  type  of  life  that  has  ever  ap- 
peared on  the  eai'th;  since  all  life,  organic  as  well  as 
unicellular,  goes  on  by  virtue  and  instrumentality  of 
the  "cell"  mode. 

What  advantage  therefore  has  accrued  to  the  cell,  and 
how  far  has  it  by  this  means  advanced  toward  that  natural 
salvation  which  is  the  goal  of  all  life  ? 

A  survey  of  the  whole  field  shows  clearly  that  the 
single  cell  made  a  great  personal  gain  by  uniting  its  life 


The  Message  of  Science.  41 

with  its  fellows.  This  is  apparent  even  in  the  primitive 
colony  of  ciliates,  more  evident  still  in  volvox,  and  grandly 
demonstrated  in  the  animal  organism.  The  cell  in  the 
colony  lived  longer  and  more  comfortably  than  when 
struggling  for  life,  alone ;  and  at  the  acme  of  organization, 
in  the  vertebrate  organism,  we  find  cells  which  have 
attained  to  what  is,  for  a  cell,  immortality.  In  unorgan- 
ized unicellular  life,  the  average  life-time  of  a  cell  may 
have  been  less  than  two  days,  not  much  longer.  In  or- 
ganized metazoic  life,  we  find  the  neurons  of  the  cerebral 
cortex  of  an  elephant,  or  a  whale,  for  example,  living  two 
centuries.  By  combining  with  their  fellows,  these  cells, 
or  their  descendants,  have  increased  their  span  of  life  thirty 
thousand  times ! 

In  man  these  brain  cells  often  survive  for  a  century. 
Human  beings,  with  life-times  correspondingly  prolonged, 
would  live  to  the  age  of  eighteen  thousand  years. 

It  is  apparent,  moreover,  that  these  groups  of  brain  cells 
would  live  longer  (for  they  give  little  evidence  of  having 
exhausted  their  capacity  for  living  on)  but  for  the  fact 
that  they  are  dragged  down  to  death  by  the  fate  of  the 
organism,  i.  e.,  the  failure  of  coordination  among  the  other 
tissue  groups  of  cells. 

This  is  profoundly  interesting  as  showing  what  cell  life, 
under  favorable  conditions,  may  accomplish  in  the  way  of 
a  vast  longevity,  —  from  successful  combinations,  and 
organization  generally.  There  appear  to  be  cells  of  the 


42  Natural  Salvation. 

brain  which  would  live  on  indefinitely  were  it  not  for  acci- 
dents to  other  parts  of  the  organism. 

Generally  speaking,  longevity  is  the  proof  of  correct 
living.  That  cell,  or  union  of  cells,  lives  long  that  is 
well  nourished  and  well  protected.  No  animal  organism 
is  as  yet  perfect,  even  approximately  so.  All  the  groups 
of  tissue  cells  have  not  been  equally  advantaged  by 
organic  union,  but  taken  together  a  great  gain  has  re- 
sulted, chiefly  in  the  matter  of  food  and  protection.  The 
brain  and  muscle  cells  of  the  animal  organism,  for  ex- 
ample, have  their  food  specially  prepared  for  them  along 
the  intestinal  tract  and  brought  to  them  in  the  arterial 
conduits,  and  they  are  housed  and  shielded  from  the 
mordant  action  of  oxygen  and  the  attacks  of  hostile 
bacteria  by  the  integument  and  bony  walls. 

All  the  physiological  cells  are  alike  benefited  in  that 
prime  requisite,  food ;  and  this  fact  must  be  kept  in  view 
when  the  higher  social  organization  of  the  metazoons  is 
considered.  Food  specially  prepared  and  refined  by 
groups  of  cells  which  have  made  this  office  their  business, 
has  largely  conduced  to  the  longevity  of  the  physiological 
cell  and  made  brain  possible.  Without  a  specially  pre- 
pared food  the  organic  cell  could  not  survive  for  a  day. 
Improved  food,  protection  from  enemies  and,  subjectively, 
that  greater  guiding  intelligence  that  comes  from  organic 
life  are  the  factors  which  have  so  improved  the  cell  (the 
protozoon  developed  to  a  neuron)  that  it  lives  for  a 


The  Message  of  Science.  43 

century  in  man,  and  in  the  whale,  the  carp  and  the 
elephant  for  two  centuries. 

In  plant  life  as  we  now  view  it,  banding  together  has 
not  been  as  advantageous  for  the  saprophytic  cell.  We 
have  trees  two  thousand  years  old ;  but  so  far  as  we  at 
present  understand  the  arboreal  economy,  the  vegetable 
cellules  are  not  long-lived.  This  would  follow,  a  priori, 
from  the  far  less  perfect  organization  of  plants,  the  more 
crude  food  supplied  to  the  cells,  imperfect  protection  and 
the  apparently  inferior  sentience  of  the  cells  themselves. 
The  contrast  but  emphasizes  the  deduction  made  for  the 
physiological  cell,  namely,  that  it  has  attained  its  pre- 
eminence by  perfecting  the  organic  union  of  which  it  is  a 
unit.  And  the  inference  has  sometimes  been  drawn  that 
could  the  metazoon  as  seen  in  the  animal  organism  be 
given  a  more  perfect  development,  the  component  cells 
would  reach  that  acme  of  natural  salvation  for  which  they 
have  striven  for  two  millions  of  centuries  and  would 
become,  in  very  truth,  deathless  cells-of-life. 

There  is  no  more  wonderful  and  grandly  instructive 
spectacle  in  nature  than  this  widespread  and  long-extended 
effort  of  the  globe's  unicellular  life  to  save  and  preserve 
itself  from  hardship,  accident,  "  disease,"  and  death. 
Nor  has  the  effort  been  "  instinctive  "  in  any  other  sense 
than  all  sentience  is  instinctive.  From  the  subjective 
side  of  life,  the  primitive  unicells  of  the  ancient  earth 
began  to  live  together  for  mutual  comfort,  aid,  and  pro- 


44  Natural  Salvation. 

tection,  and  continued  these  unions  till  by  division  of 
labor  and  differentiation  of  function  the  simple  colony 
developed  into  the  vertebrate  animal  organism,  with  its 
thirty  specialized  genera  of  cells,  all  acting  together  for 
the  common  weal. 

Man  must  still  turn  to  the  unicells  for  grand  examples 
of  social  organization  and  progress  by  means  of  organiza- 
tion. Vastly  and  grandly  more  than  is  yet  exhibited  in 
human  civilizations  have  the  protozoons  united  and  com- 
bined for  mutual  betterment.  In  this  maple,  towering  in 
leafy  beaut}r,  we  may  find  two  billions  of  arboreal  cells, 
organized,  apportioned  for  diverse  labors,  trained  to 
special  work,  devoted  and  artisaned  to  the  production  of 
fiber,  bark,  sugar,  and  chlorophyl,  and  all  in  an  orderly 
sequence  of  effects  and  a  consecration  of  each  cell  self  to 
its  appointed  task,  and  with  an  apparent  content  and  faith 
in  the  outcome,  when  each  does  his  share,  such  as  the 
human  world  has  never  yet  seen  nor  understood. 

In  that  horse  dashing  along  the  track  we  behold  several 
billions  of  cells,  each  a  living  creature,  an  individual  life, 
banded,  united,  and  organized  in  such  multicellular  com- 
plexity that  it  is  the  glory  of  anatomy  and  histology  even 
to  have  demonstrated  and  described  it.  And  in  the  mat- 
ter of  locomotion  —  since  speed  is  the  criterion  in  the 
horse  —  we  may  behold  this  entire  body  of  cells  moving 
at  a  speed  a  million  times  greater  than  that  at  which  it 
would  be  possible  for  these  cells  to  move  if  living  isolated 


The  Message  of  Science.  45 

and  solitary,  as  did  the  ancestral  protozoon  on  the  beach 
of  the  Cambrian  Ocean. 

We  should  not  here  be  understood  as  denying  or  leav- 
ing out  of  the  account  the  influence  which  the  metazoic 
mind  exerts  for  longevity.  It  is  by  reason  of  this  supe- 
rior intelligence,  obtained  by  banding  the  small  wits  of  the 
cells  together,  that  those  better  conditions  were  gained 
which  make  cell  longevity  possible.  Nor  yet  would  we 
appear  to  assert  that  the  animal  organism  lives  for  the 
benefit,  or  at  the  behoof  of  the  component  cells.  In  the 
animal  brain  the  cells  live  to  themselves  only  during  the 
eight  or  ten  hours  of  sleep  daily.  During  waking  hours 
the  lives  of  all  these  cells  are  consentient,  having  banded 
and  blended  together  to  form  the  self-conscious  mind  of 
the  animal,  which  devotes  its  energies  to  supplying  the 
animal  wants.  Without  this  consentient  union  for  men- 
tation, locomotion,  and  general  muscular  activity,  the 
animal  could  not  have  developed.  The  component  cells 
improved,  each  its  individual  condition,  by  forming  a  con- 
sentient partnership. 

This  point  might  readily  be  given  fuller  illustration,  and 
a  thousand  examples  of  metazoic  life  cited  in  evidence  of 
the  principle,  rationale,  and  intent  of  the  passage  from  uni- 
cellular to  multicellular  life ;  but  the  idea  has  been  con- 
veyed ;  and  this  is  enough  for  our  present  purpose.  The 
genuineness  of  the  deduction  can  hardly  be  controverted. 
By  banding  together  and  by  organization,  with  division  of 


46  Natural  Salvation. 

labor  for  the  common  good  of  the  union,  the  cell-of-life,  as 
first  seen  in  the  protozoon,  has  come  to  live  two  centuries, 
instead  of  two  days,  with  a  legitimate  inference  that  it  is 
practically  deathless  under  improved  organic  conditions. 
That  is  to  say,  there  is  nothing  in  the  constitution  of  the 
cell,  no  biogenetic  law,  that  prevents  it  from  living  in- 
definitely. Revolutionary  as  this  deduction  may  appear 
to  those  who  teach  and  believe  that  death  is  a  final  law  of 
nature,  the  reverse  of  that  doctrine  can  now  be  confidently 
maintained.  It  need  scarcely  be  added  that  this  conclu- 
sion is  of  the  greatest  significance,  as  affecting  our  beliefs 
concerning  human  life  and  the  future  of  life  on  the  earth. 


And  now  after  metazoons,  what?  After  cell  unions 
and  cell  organization  in  the  animal  organism,  what  next? 
After  an  organized  development  which  has  resulted  in  the 
advancement  of  the  cell,  the  brain  cell,  to  a  high  degree 
of  intelligence  and  a  grand  longevity,  what  next  in  the 
line  of  its  progress  ? 

Bearing  in  mind  that  the  cell  is  the  original  and, 
strictly  speaking,  the  only  type  or  mode  of  life  which  has 
thus  far  appeared  on  the  earth,  what  means  will  be  adopted 
to  still  further  improve  and  better  its  lot?  Will  it  of  its 
own  initiative  inaugurate  anything  better  or  greater  than 
the  animal  organism  as  we  see  it  about  the  cerebro-spinal 
axis  in  vertebrates  ? 


The  Message  of  Science.  47 

The  answer  would  seem  to  be  no,  as  regards  the  in- 
dividual cell,  and  yes,  as  regards  the  consentient  union  of 
cells  as  displayed  in  the  brain  and  mind  of  animals  and 
man.  And  if  yes,  what  has  already  been  accomplished  in 
this  larger  corporate  capacity?  Union  and  organization 
are  manifestly  the  order  and  method  of  all  life  on  the 
earth.  Since  the  cell  banded  in  the  metazoons  and  made 
a  grand  gain  for  itself  in  so  doing,  we  might  naturally 
look  for  unions  of  metazoons  for  mutual  benefit  and  prog- 
ress. But  here,  as  against  such  actual  unions  by  contact, 
the  physical  laws  of  the  globe  of  matter  on  which  we  live 
interpose  obstacles.  We  cannot  have  sixty  millions  of 
men,  or  monkeys,  or  elephants  living  in  a  ball,  like  volvox. 
Contact-union  for  mutual  aid,  defense,  protection,  com- 
fort, and  improved  food  is  limited.  If  we  attempted  to 
unite  or  blend  a  nation  of  people  as  a  metazoon,  or  even 
make  it  resemble  one  in  the  matter  of  consentience,  as,  for 
example,  the  eighty  or  more  millions  in  the  United  States, 
or  the  forty  millions  of  Great  Britain,  every  person,  or 
citizen,  would  need  to  be  represented  as  almost  wholly  de- 
prived of  locomotion,  and  seated,  as  if  at  a  desk  or  table, 
in  one  place,  where  food  and  the  material  for  his  work 
were  brought  to  him  in  ducts  and  tubes.  Still  further,  it 
would  be  necessary  to  conceive  of  them  all  as  built  in  and 
encased  by  the  substances  which  they  manufacture. 
Further  still,  and  most  essential  of  all  to  the  truth  and 
pertinence  of  the  simile,  we  should  need  to  depict  every 


48  Natural  Salvation. 

citizen  as  connected  with  his  neighbors  and  through  them 
with  every  other  citizen,  by  cables,  bands,  or  cords  of  sen- 
tient living  matter  continuous  with  his  own  living  sub- 
stance. We  must  picture,  too,  the  more  prominent  class 
of  citizens  as  having  thrust  forth  immensely  long  tentacles, 
forming  nets  of  this  same  sentient  matter,  extending  long 
distances  from  their  bodies,  and  lying  in  close  contact  with 
similar  tentacles  belonging  to  hundreds  of  their  fellows, 
in  order  that  they  may  feel  and  literally  sense  all  that  they 
do  or  think. 

If  this  condition  of  things  existed  throughout  the 
nation,  we  should  undoubtedly  find  the  individual  citizens 
living  as  one  enormous  National  Person.  In  place  of 
eighty  millions  of  individual  men  and  women,  we  should 
see  them  unified  in  a  self-conscious  national  life.  Such  a 
nation  would  act  and  conduct  itself  among  other  nations 
as  a  Personal  Being. 

Upon  a  lower  plane  of  inorganic  relationship  of  particle 
to  particle  and  ion  to  ion,  in  the  atomic  sense,  it  is  possible 
that  such  a  unified  personality  possesses  the  universe,  an- 
swering to  the  indefinite  conception  of  deity.  Gravitation 
has  been  held  to  be  the  lowly  organized  personality  of 
cosmos,  expressing  itself  in  natural  phenomena.  Von 
Hartmann,  in  his  "Philosophy  of  the  Unconscious," 
appears  to  have  grasped  some  such  conception,  which, 
however,  he  immediately  perverted  to  the  exigencies  of  an 
immoral  philosophy. 


The  Message  of  Science.  49 

Since  rneta-metazoons,  as  of  vertabrates,  are  physical 
impossibilities,  the  advantages  which  come  from  union  and 
organization  have  to  be  secured  in  a  different  way,  by 
other  methods  of  obtaining  the  necessary  consentience. 

In  hymenoptera  (insect  metazoons)  the  bees  and  ants 
offer  suggestive  examples  of  social  and  economic  unions. 
In  the  swarm  and  apiary  we  find  that  differentiation  of 
function  and  division  of  labor  have  proceeded  far,  and 
taken  their  place  in  heredity;  and  in  the  case  of  the 
queen  bee  the  social  organization  has  operated  to  greatly 
prolong  her  life.  Swarm  life  also  serves  to  afford  general 
protection  from  enemies,  equalize  the  food  supply,  and 
defend  the  union  against  the  rigors  of  climate. 

In  the  termite  ants  we  find  not  only  all  these  advan- 
tages gained  from  swarm  organization,  but  others  that  come 
from  the  war-like  operations  which  organized  union  ren- 
ders possible. 

In  bird  life,  crows,  pigeons,  geese,  penguins,  and  many 
other  species  have  attained  advantages  from  rude  organiza- 
tion ;  and  in  mammalian  life  there  are  many  humble  ex- 
amples of  flocking,  herding  and  banding  together  for 
mutual  benefit,  to  gain  protection  from  enemies  and  to 
secure  food.  The  wild  horse,  bison  and  caribou  herd  for 
protection ;  wolves  pack  to  pull  down  larger  animals  for 
food ;  baboons,  monkeys  and  savage  humans  band,  tribe 
and  horde  for  protection,  better  food  and  companionship. 

The  lower  vertebrate  orders  and  primitive  man  have 


50  Natural  Salvation. 

thus  set  us  examples,  so  to  speak,  pioneered  the  way  and 
initiated  that  larger  organization  by  virtue  of  which 
"  civilization  "  has  arisen.  The  early  and  wild  mutations 
of  men  furnish  complicated  yet  fairly  clear  studies  of  the 
development  of  the  nation  from  the  tribe  and  the  clan. 
No  different  principle  is  involved  than  that  seen  to  be 
operative  in  the  flock  and  horde,  and  also  in  the  ant-hill 
and  hive.  It  is  the  "  instinctive  "  sentient  effort  and  push 
of  the  cell-of-life  to  obtain  better  conditions. 

It  is  not  the  intention  here  to  enter  upon  the  political 
history  of  mankind,  the  rise  of  nations  and  empires,  or  the 
causes  of  their  decline.  Nor  yet  to  trace  the  beginnings 
of  commerce,  or  the  rise  of  the  arts  and  sciences ;  or  re- 
count the  history  of  war  and  the  constant  world-wide 
struggle  for  freedom  from  oppression.  It  is  all  a  part  of 
that  process  of  union  and  organization  of  humanity,  to  se- 
cure higher  advantages.  Something  analogous  to  it  has 
taken  place  among  the  tissue  cells  in  the  development  of 
the  animal  organism :  the  natural  clash  of  conflicting  in- 
terests, the  fight  of  self  against  self-surrender  for  the  com- 
mon good,  that  self-surrender  which  comes  so  hard,  yet 
always  redounds  subsequently  to  the  individual  good  and 
ennoblement. 

For  fifty  thousand  years  the  effort  at  human  organiza- 
tion has  ebbed  and  flowed,  operating  blindly,  'misled  by  a 
thousand  false  ideals  and  "  revelations."  Religion  has 
fought  against  religion,  cult  against  cult,  and  "god" 


The  Message  of  Science.  51 

against  "  god."  For  the  true  law  of  human  progress  was 
not  yet  perceived.  The  ideal  of  human  confraternity  was 
not  yet  recognized ;  that  ideal  which  the  convexed  surface 
of  the  globe  so  strongly  suggests,  and  which  the  greater 
history  of  cell  life  so  convincingly  teaches.  For  it  is  the 
inestimable  privilege  of  our  science  to  narrate  the  rise  of 
the  cell-of-life  and  demonstrate  the  method  and  law  of  its 
progress ;  to  found  natural  salvation  and  uphold  a  new 
ideal ;  to  confirm  the  doctrine  of  human  brotherhood  as 
taught  by  the  Founder  of  the  Christian  religion  and,  inci- 
dentally, to  show  why  that  sublime  doctrine  has  for  nine- 
teen centuries  appealed  so  strongly  to  the  human  heart ; 
because  it  is  a  law  of  terrestrial  life  and  a  necessity  to 
further  human  progress. 

The  advisability  of  peace  and  good-will  among  men  had 
been  taught  before  the  Christian  era,  and  the  advantages 
of  harmonious  action  set  forth  by  others  ;  but  the  person- 
age who  appears  in  history  as  Joshua,  or  Jesus,  was  the 
first  who  profoundly /eft  and  lived  it,  and  gave  his  life  for 
it.  In  his  mind  glowed  that  divine  ideal  of  a  "  kingdom 
of  God  "  arising  from  brotherly  love  and  that  mutual  co- 
operation and  union  of  all  humanity  which  alone  can 
insure  salvation  under  nature.  Biology  endorses  with  a 
cordial  reverence  the  tremendous  efficacy  of  that  ideal 
and  shows  it  to  be  in  line  with  the  whole  progress  of  life 
on  the  earth.  Science  now  labors  for  the  realization  of 
that  ideal.  Every  other  doctrine  of  the  Christian  faith 


52  Natural  Salvation. 

will  fall,  its  eschatology  fade  away.  That  alone  will 
remain;  for  it  is,  indeed,  millions  of  years  old;  it  has 
been  operative  for  two  millions  of  centuries.  Thousands 
of  years  before  our  era,  unhistoric  Christs  had  announced 
it  in  horde  and  conclave  and  died  for  it ;  but  Jesus  put  it 
in  the  form  of  a  world-faith  for  this  latter  epoch  ;  and  his 
service  of  love  must  ever  command  our  reverent  affection. 
He  identified  himself  with  that  universal  law  of  life  by 
virtue  of  which  ion  and  primeval  psychon  surrender  their 
self-lives  to  form  the  cell  life,  the  cell  the  human  intellect, 
and  by  virtue  of  which  still  the  human  life  will  hereafter 
live  in  the  grander  life  of  a  deathless  humanity.  For  the 
psychon  is  not  self-lost  in  the  cell,  nor  the  cell  in  the 
organism,  but  from  its  self-surrender  lives  a  better  and 
longer  life ;  and  in  the  future  grand  sodality  of  human 
life  the  individuals  will  become  immortal,  even  as  the  cell 
has  prolonged  its  life  in  the  brain.  The  vital  unit  is  not 
lost  in  the  union.  What  it  gives  of  self  to  the  organiza- 
tion returns  to  it  again  with  compensations ;  and  he  who 
casts  his  life  into  the  consentient  human  effort,  takes  it 
again,  ennobled  by  self-sacrifice ;  it  returns  to  him,  christ- 
ened and  imbued  by  the  larger  life  of  which  for  a  time  it 
has  formed  a  part.  The  brain  cell  could  never  have 
attained  its  present  estate  but  for  the  greater  personal  life 
of  the  organism  in  which,  for  a  part  of  the  time,  it  blends 
itself. 

For  the  point  to  be  kept  steadily  in  view  is,  that  cell 


The  Message  of  Science.  53 

life,  perfect  enough  not  to  die,  but  live  on  continuously, 
is  a  question  and  merely  a  question  of  excellent  food, 
protection  from  injury  and  germinal  renewal,  and  not  that 
death  is  a  final  "  law  of  nature,"  as  a  false  eschatology 
has  hitherto  taught  mankind. 

If  the  science  of  biology  teaches  anything,  it  teaches 
this  truth  of  the  possible  deathlessness  of  cell  life  on  the 
earth ;  and  this  truth  is  to  the  last  degree  important  and 
revolutionary.  The  doctrine  that  death  is  a  final  "  law 
of  nature  "  has  been  made  the  cornerstone  of  that  other 
cardinal  doctrine,  namely,  the  "  disembodied  spirit "  myth. 
With  the  refutation  of  the  doctrine  that  death  is  a  "  law  of 
nature  "  will  fall  this  latter  doctrine  of  disembodied  souls. 
For  it  will  no  longer  have  a  raison  d'etre.  In  its  place  will 
come  that  grander  gospel  that  life  is  the  "  law  of  nature," 
not  death,  and  the  demonstration,  long  overshadowed  by 
errors  of  theology,  that  the  "kingdom  of  God"  is  a 
natural  development  of  life  on  the  earth. 

Two  millions  of  centuries  have  struggled  forward  in 
pain  and  travail  to  make  the  human  brain  capable  of  the 
human  intellect.  It  is  a  priceless  heritage,  the  great  an- 
cestral estate  of  humanity.  It  is  not  destined  forever, 
nor  much  longer,  to  be  lost  in  death;  we  shall  carry  it 
through  to  a  greater  destiny.  The  true  scope  and  intent 
of  life  is  now  just  dawning  in  the  minds  of  men.  We  are 
waking,  —  after  idle  dreams, —  waking  to  what  we  can  do 
and  be,  waking  to  the  great  possibilities  of  science,  wak- 


54  Natural  Salvation. 

ing  to  live,  instead  of  resigning  ourselves  to  death  and 
mythical  promises  of  ghost  life. 

But  how  ?  How  will  this  be  accomplished  ?  Granted 
that  the  cells  of  the  human  brain  may  live  for  a  century, 
the  entire  human  organism  still  dies  and  the  cells  perish 
with  it.  How  will  this  fate  be  altered  or  averted  ? 

The  answer  is  plain.  It  is  already  outlined  and  indi- 
cated in  the  manner  and  the  means  by  which  the  cell  has 
prolonged  its  lifetime  from  a  few  days  to  a  century.  We 
have  but  to  study  the  rise  and  progress  of  the  physiologi- 
cal cell.  Its  life  history  is  set  before  our  eyes  in  the 
animal  organism.  By  union,  organization,  differentiation 
of  function  and  division  of  labor  for  the  common  weal, 
this  long-perfected  animal  organism  has  been  developed. 
But  now,  to  carry  its  development  forward  and  im- 
mortalize the  component  cells,  an  onward  step  in  organi- 
zation is  necessary.  The  human  individual  must  be 
made  the  unit  of  a  greater  system,  even  as  the  cell  has 
been  the  unit  of  the  animal  body. 

And  this  greater  system  of  union,  organization  and 
division  of  labor  has  already  been  initiated,  unconsciously, 
it  may  be  said,  on  the  part  of  mankind.  For  thousands 
of  years  human  beings  have  been  banding  together  to  this 
very  end,  unconscious  of  the  real  purport  of  their  effort ! 
The  personal  ends  which,  individually,  men  have  had  in 
view,  as  the  motive  of  their  labor,  eventuate  in  a  greater 


The  Message  of  Science.  55 

achievement  than  they  wot  of.  For  it  does  not  follow 
that  the  human  intellect,  composed  of  cell  sentiences,  can 
always  comprehend  the  outcome  of  its  acts.  The  intel- 
lect is  not  yet  sufficiently  consentient  to  perceive  and 
understand  the  deeper  instinct  of  the  component  cells. 
Instinct,  of  which  we  have  heard  so  much,  is  the  dimly 
perceived  motive  and  will  of  the  cells. 

But,  as  has  been  said,  an  organization  by  consentient  or 
"  protoplasmic  "  contact,  human  being  to  human  being,  is 
impracticable  under  the  laws  of  terrestrial  matter  and  un- 
desirable for  ideal  and  economic  reasons.  We  therefore 
resort  to  a  better  kind  of  union  and  organization  —  better 
because  it  affords  greater  individual  liberty,  based  on 
intercommunication  by  the  use  of  abstract  signs  and  sym- 
bols, and  also  impress  the  more  ethereal  states  or  modes  of 
matter  into  our  service  to  accomplish  intercourse  ;  so  that 
personal  feeling  and  thought  (which  is  the  feeling  of  the 
brain-cells)  can  be  freely  communicated  from  individual 
to  individual,  as  freely  and  intelligibly  as  if  by  contact  of 
protoplasmic  filaments.  Protozoons,  indeed,  might  never 
have  united  to  form  metazoons  had  they  possessed  any- 
thing like  human  facilities  for  intercommunication.  They 
were  dependent  wholly  on  touch  and  feeling,  and  on  this 
sentient  basis  the  animal  organism,  which  we  inherit, 
grew  up. 

The  extent  to  which  this  humanly  developed  system  of 
intercommunication  has  progressed  need  not  here  be  de- 


56  Natural  Salvation. 

scribed.  Language,  commerce,  education,  the  industries, 
arts,  sciences,  law,  religion,  medicine  and  the  entire 
social  order  have  come  forth  and  grown  up  from  it. 
Mails,  transportation,  telegraphy  and  telephones  are  adap- 
tations and  inventions  to  effect  a  larger  intercourse.  In 
fact,  the  means  and  facilities  for  communication  are  now 
ample.  It  is  not  lack  of  these  which  delays  the  progress 
of  humanity.  A  most  rapid  advance  is  possible.  The 
obstacle  to  progress  is  the  lack  of  the  spirit  of  cooperation, 
lack  of  confidence  and  good-will,  lack  of  understanding  of 
the  real  situation.  Instead  of  this  essential  good-will 
there  is  suspicion,  envy  and  hatred,  which  pave  the  way 
to  violent  acts,  war  and  destruction  of  the  hard-earned 
fruits  of  labor. 

It  is  the  same  ancient  dislike  of  self-sacrifice  seen  in  the 
protozoon,  which  so  long  delayed  metazoic  life ;  the 
same  unbelief  that  the  merging  of  self  in  the  community 
will  redound  to  the  benefit  of  the  individual ;  the  same 
reluctance  to  work  for  the  common  weal ;  the  same  self- 
love  that  makes  so  many  millions  of  our  fellows  unwilling 
to  share  and  share  alike  with  others,  blinded  to  the  fact 
that  their  greater  happiness  lies  in  just  that  act  of  self- 
surrender!  Blind,  too,  to  that  other  greater  fact,  that 
along  this  line  of  self-sacrifice  and  cooperation  alone  lies 
salvation  from  disease  and  death.  This  is  the  Way. 

Just  as  the  cells  unite  their  lives  and  work  together  for 
the  common  good,  so  must  the  citizens  of  a  nation  or 


The  Message  of  Science.  57 

country  devise  methods  and  form  habits  of  united  effort, 
to  accomplish  great  ends.  The  first  step  to  this  is  good- 
fellowship,  good  will  one  to  another,  mutual  confidence, 
and  a  determination  to  cooperate.  There  is  no  other  way. 
Selfishness  is  retrogression.  The  way  to  enduring  life  is 
through  consecration  of  self  to  the  common  good.  This 
is  the  lesson  from  the  cells.  This  is  the  method  of  nature. 
By  following  this  method,  for  example,  multicellular  man 
may  live  eighteen  thousand  years.  He  may  live  forever. 

In  unicellular  life,  no  separate  single  cell,  by  any  de- 
vice, or  husbandry  of  its  life,  could  have  lived  a  century, 
or  a  year.  It  is  only  by  union  and  self-consecration  that 
the  long-lived  organism  has  been  developed  and  the 
neuron  become  a  partaker  in  its  longer  life.  And  even  so 
in  organized,  perfected  humanity  the  component  individ- 
uals will  become  macro-bio  tic. 

By  united  effort  all  are  raised  up  to  a  higher  plane  of 
life.  Faulty  and  imperfect  as  it  is,  human  civilization  has 
doubled  the  years  of  man.  Twelve  centuries  ago  the 
average  length  of  a  human  life  in  Europe  was  evidently 
less  than  eighteen  years.  But  compared  with  what  science 
could  do  with  its  present  resources  of  knowledge,  existent 
civilization  is  but  the  most  rudimentary  of  organizations. 
The  effort  at  an  advanced  civilization  is  barely  inaugu- 
rated, as  yet.  All  the  great  results  are  to  come. 

The  only  obstacle  is  ignorance :  ignorant  distrust,  igno- 
rant hatreds  for  creed's  sake,  or  for  race's  sake ;  fatuous 


58  Natural  Salvation. 

ideals  of  patriotism,  forgetting  that  all  men  are  brothers ; 
insensate  ambitions  to  build  up  one  nation  in  wealth  and 
political  power  at  the  expense  of  the  rest  of  the  world, 
reckless  of  the  refluent  wave  that  will  sweep  it  away  in 
blood  and  loss. 

The  priests  and  preachers  of  Christianity  have  made 
but  a  feeble  progress  in  convincing  the  world  of  the  truth 
and  utility  of  this  great  doctrine  of  Jesus,  because  they 
have  not  comprehended  it  themselves.  They  have  under- 
stood neither  its  scope  nor  significance.  The  great  doc- 
trine of  brotherly  love  and  human  equality  has  been 
preached  rather  as  a  sentimental  tenet,  a  species  of  Sab- 
bath-day duty,  a  symbol  of  allegiance  to  the  church,  a 
kind  of  holy  discipline  for  the  soul,  to  prepare  it  for  "  an- 
other world."  They  have  missed,  lost  and  sacrificed  the 
power  of  the  golden  rule  as  an  agent  for  controlling  and 
elevating  mankind,  because  they  have  made  it  a  shibbo- 
leth of  church  membership  rather  than  a  prime  requisite 
of  human  progress.  The  real  significance  of  this  doctrine 
has  yet  to  be  made  plain  to  human  eyes ;  its  real  strength 
has  yet  to  be  manifested.  Then,  not  till  then,  will  the 
human  race  accept  it  and  act  on  it.  This  deeper-lying 
truth  of  life  has  yet  to  be  instilled  in  the  mind  of  hu- 
manity. Church  Christianity  has  never  evinced  an  un- 
derstanding of  it,  perhaps  never  can  have  an  adequate 
comprehension  of  it,  as  long  as  the  "  kingdom  of  God  "  is 
believed  to  be  an  immaterial  realm  of  disembodied  spirits 


The  Message  of  Science.  59 

in  some  unknown  quarter  of  the  universe.  The  Son  of 
David  distinctly  and  repeatedly  claimed  to  be  the  Hebrew 
Messiah,  the  realization  of  the  prophet-promise  of  Jeho- 
vah to  the  patriarchs.  He  is  a  rash  commentator  who 
asserts  that  the  Beni-Israel  ever  believed  this  promised 
Messiah  to  be  other  than  a  terrestrial  one,  the  founder  of 
a  kingdom  of  God  and  of  Israel  on  the  earth.  There  has 
been  a  fatal  break  in  the  facts  of  Scripture  here,  an  in- 
sincere compromise  with  Zend-Avestan  spirit  myths,  which 
has  always  weakened  Christianity  as  a  world  faith,  and 
from  which  science  will  now  shortly  compel  it  to  purge 
itself  or  fall. 

The  golden  rule  is  no  sentimental  phantasy  of  an 
exalted  dreamer,  but  a  matter  of  human  utility  and  neces- 
sity. This  is  the  Way,  and  until  it  is  adopted, 
nationally  and  internationally,  mankind  will  stick  and 
pause  in  its  onward  career.  It  is  a  prime  requisite  to  the 
farther  progress  of  human  life,  and  as  such  must  be 
recognized  by  civilized  man  everywhere.  It  is  that 
greater  Christianity  which  is  yet  to  come. 


The  difficulty  of  initiating  an  era  of  good-will  and 
mutual  cooperation  lies  not  so  much  in  the  perversity  of 
men,  individually,  or  their  inherent  unwillingness  to 
make  those  needful  sacrifices,  as  in  our  present  inability 
to  bring  about  a  world- wide  understanding  and  to  secure 


60  Natural  Salvation. 

common  consent  of  all  parties  and  peoples.  Thousands, 
yes,  millions  of  the  dominant  race,  are  convinced  that  the 
highest  good  of  all  lies  in  an  unselfish  federation  and  or- 
ganization of  all  terrestrial  interests.  But  there  are  the 
alien  races,  speaking  other  tongues  and  intensely  jealous 
of  the  dominant  race ;  and  even  worse,  there  are  the 
oppugnant  religious  systems,  each  claiming  to  hold  all  the 
truth  in  the  universe,  possessing  each  a  supreme  deity  and 
sacred  ritual  of  its  own,  and  denouncing  the  votaries  of 
all  other  systems  as  enemies  of  Good  and  emissaries  of 
Evil. 

Strangely  enough  —  where  the  converse  should  hold  — 
it  is  religion  which  will  longest  bar  the  coming  of  "  the 
kingdom  of  God !  "  Sadly  enough,  too,  it  is  not  those 
tenets  that  pertain  to  life  on  the  earth  which  have  set 
sectaries  so  inveterately  apart,  but  doctrines  concerning 
future  paradises  and  gehennas. 

The  saddest  spectacle  which  the  earth  presents  is  that 
of  the  zealot  millions  ready  to  carry  war  and  devastation, 
from  continent  to  continent,  in  the  name  of  Allah  or 
Jehovah.  If  the  biologist  ever  utters  a  prayer  it  is  for 
human  deliverance  from  religion  in  the  fossil  state.  If 
one  world-task  looks  harder  than  another,  it  is  to  redeem 
the  human  brain  from  the  incubus  of  religious  indoctrina- 
tion, and  set  it  natural  again,  capable  once  more  of  a 
normal  perception  of  truth.  Herakles  of  old  might  have 
blanched  at  that  labor. 


The  Message  of  Science.  61 

For  the  brain  is  "  formed  "  and  the  courses  of  thought 
molded  to  doctrinal  ideas,  taught  by  church  authority. 
When  these  doctrines  have  been  inculcated  for  centuries, 
and  then  found  to  be  wrong,  the  task  of  rectification  is  a 
most  disheartening  one.  Considered  in  gross,  the  entire 
brain  of  humanity,  at  present,  is  under  the  spell  of 
erroneous  creeds,  and  does  its  thinking  along  perverted 
channels  of  mentation.  The  belief  that  this  earth  is 
merely  a  place  of  probation  for  heaven  after  the  death  of 
the  body  is  the  worst  possible  initiative  for  the  achieve- 
ment of  that  natural  salvation  which  is,  and  has  ever  been, 
the  real  goal  of  life.  Mankind  cannot  rise  in  opposition 
to  its  own  faith,  nor  will  the  effort  to  attain  a  natural 
salvation  begin  in  earnest  until  the  truth  and  the  facts 
concerning  the  soul  of  man  are  understood  and  accepted. 


The  inference  and  argument  for  natural  salvation  have 
brought  us,  step  by  step,  from  the  protozoon  to  that 
wonderful  congeries  and  federation  of  cells,  grouped  about 
the  cerebro-spinal  axis  of  man  ;  in  other  words,  to  man  in 
his  present  imperfect  social  organization ;  his  blindly  sel- 
fish attitude  to  his  fellow-beings  ;  his  weapons  and  engines 
of  destruction ;  his  standing  armies  and  navies ;  his  wars 
and  his  antagonistic  creeds.  That  confident  cooperation 
and  good-will  to  his  fellows,  necessary  to  organize 
humanity  for  its  crowning  achievement  —  the  achieve- 


62  Natural  Salvation. 

ment  of  immortal  life  —  have  yet  to  be  inspired  in  the 
hearts  of  men  ;  and  the  point  to  be  kept  in  view  is,  that 
this  is  the  inspiration  imperatively  necessary  to  future 
progress,  the  sine  qua  non  of  the  human  situation. 

No  gift  of  prophecy,  no  skill  of  divination,  is  required 
to  forecast  what  might  be  done  on  our  planet  in  half  a 
century  of  good-will  and  cordial  cooperation  among  men. 
When  the  billions  of  hard-earned  wealth,  now  wasted  in 
war  and  warlike  equipment,  are  applied  to  research,  dis- 
covery, invention  and  the  general  application  of  knowl- 
edge to  the  amelioration  of  human  life,  then  will  begin  an 
era  of  human  advancement  to  which  all  previous  progress 
is  as  a  fitful  starbeam  to  the  glory  of  the  rising  sun! 
Dull  is  the  mental  vision  of  him  who  cannot  discern  this 
promise  of  our  incipient  sciences.  It  will  surely  come ; 
but  it  might  come  speedily,  before  the  year  2000.  It  will 
come  from  the  combining  of  all  human  knowledge,  the 
joining  of  brain  to  brain  by  mutual  incentive,  like  cells  of 
an  electric  battery  joined  to  raise  strength  of  current,  to 
secure  that  consentient  elevation  of  intelligence  which  will 
carry  achievement  to  an  ecstasy  of  enthusiasm  and  great 
hope. 

There  is  inventive  talent  enough  in  the  general  brain  of 
mankind,  now  lying  inactive,  unemployed,  or  perverted, 
to  obviate  most  of  human  ills,  could  this  talent  and  genius 
be  given  opportunity  and  incentive,  and  be  organized  for 
work. 


The  Message  of  Science.  63 

Fifty  years  of  such  organized  effort  would  usher  in 
achievements  even  to  predict  which  would  now  be  thought 
visionary.  Fifty  years  of  confraternal  endeavor  would  so 
perfect  locomotion  and  transportation  that  journeying  to 
any  portion  of  the  globe  could  be  accomplished  in  from 
three  to  five  days,  accomplished  in  ease  and  comfort,  and 
with  a  fair  degree  of  safety. 

This  of  itself  would  be  the  first  and  best  step  to  effac- 
ing the  ancient  antipathies  of  race  and  religion.  The 
formula  for  introducing  the  Golden  Rule  among  men 
is  intercommunication  versus  ancient  isolation. 

Within  fifty  years,  perhaps  much  less,  we  might  come 
to  understand  the  internal  economy  of  the  cell-of-life,  and 
might  master  the  problems  of  its  reproduction.  These 
problems  are  already  outlined;  but  we  are  still  ignorant 
why  the  somatic  cells  wax  and  wane,  from  youth  to  age ; 
or  more  explicitly,  what  charge  of  ions,  "  biophors,"  or 
"  gemmules "  is  concentrated  in  the  cells  of  the  germ- 
plasm.;  how  this  marvelous  recharging  of  life  from  genera- 
tion to  generation  is  accomplished ;  why  the  commingling 
of  cells  from  the  two  sexes  is  advantageous,  or  requisite ; 
and,  in  general,  the  nature,  chemical  composition  and 
mode  of  production  of  these  minute  germ  elements  of  the 
organic  tissues. 

These  are  studies  and  discoveries  which  urgently  wait 
the  scrutiny  of  earnest,  well-equipped  students  of  our  sci- 
ence. That  they  are  beyond  human  discovery  might  have 


64  Natural  Salvation. 

been  believed  once,  but  will  hardly  obtain  credit  in  our 
times.  In  fact,  we  are  on  the  brink  of  such  dis- 
coveries. 

We  need  to  know  the  composition  of  the  animal  ovum, 
of  what  the  germinal  matter  consists,  how  and  whence  it 
arrives  there,  and  how  it  may  be  produced  artificially. 
We  have  to  discover  what  selected  components  —  ions, 
electrons,  psychons,  or  biophors  —  this  animal  ovum  is  com- 
posed, to  the  end  that  the  various  tracts  of  somatic  cells 
issue  from  it  and  coordinate  in  the  tissues  of  the  organism. 
We  have  to  learn  on  what  actual  physical  basis  old-aging 
proceeds :  whether  as  animal  life  goes  on,  the  tissue  cell  is 
slowly  depleted  of  its  initial  complement  of  germinal  mat- 
ter; whether  the  original  "charge"  of  ancestral  life-germs 
is  gradually  exhausted  in  numbers  or  potency ;  or  whether 
the  contents  of  this  body  cell  are  homogeneous,  and  old- 
aging  ensues  from  imperfect  foods  and  the  ravages  and 
deleterious  products  of  bacteria. 

In  short,  we  have  to  learn  whether  the  somatic  cell  runs 
down,  like  a  water  spring,  from  expenditure  of  its  con- 
centrated biophors,  or  whether  it  is  simply  smothered, 
poisoned,  slowly  encysted  and  suffocated  by  the  weather- 
ing, infiltration,  and  induration  of  the  tissues  in  which  it 
lies  embedded.  Whether  old-aging  is  a  slow  form  of 
starvation  from  the  contraction  and  hardening  of  the  capil- 
lary walls  and  the  thickening  of  the  lung  membranes. 

Or  yet,   whether   all   these    causes   operate   together, 


The  Message  of  Science.  65 

namely,  slow  starvation  and  suffocation,  combined  with 
depletion  of  the  inherited  germinal  matter. 

For  exhaustion  or  expenditure  of  the  vivific  units  of 
the  somatic  cells,  some  process  of  inoculation,  kataphoresis, 
or  inward  radiation  of  ions  may  be  devised ;  for  the  pro- 
gressive suffocation,  poisoning-out  and  starvation  of  the 
cells,  an  amelioration  of  all  the  conditions  of  life  as  we  now 
live  it,  must  be  accomplished,  viz.,  the  extermination  of 
bacteria,  purification  of  the  atmosphere  and  the  use  of  foods 
adapted  to  protoplasmic  renewal ;  all  purely  physical 
problems  and  properly  the  subjects  of  scientific  research ; 
and  all  in  line  and  continuation  of  that  natural  salvation 
of  the  cell-of-life  from  accident,  disease  and  death,  which 
has  been  in  progress  since  life  began  on  the  earth. 

Parent  and  child,  through  a  hundred  generations,  con- 
stitute but  one  human  personality,  pressing  forward,  in 
time,  to  become  something  better,  wiser,  more  powerful 
and  happier.  The  parent  dies  and  the  child  succeeds, 
but  at  a  vast  loss  of  knowledge  and  of  time,  not  because 
death  and  birth  are  the  ideal  or  ultimate  laws  of  life,  but 
merely  because  we  have  not  yet  acquired  sufficient  knowl- 
edge and  power  to  escape  death.  The  human  personality, 
incarnate,  living  on  from  century  to  century,  conserving 
science,  able  to  renew  itself  and  resist  all  the  vulgar 
agencies  of  decay  and  death,  is  the  ideal  human  being, 
not  a  chain  of  parents  and  children. 

But  life,  as  we  now  live,  is  one  long  contention  with 


66  Natural  Salvation. 

accidents,  bacteria,  improper  food,  duress  of  climate  and 
hostile  fellow-creatures.  First  the  cell  was  driven  to  a 
mode  of  reproduction,  to  escape  extinction ;  multicellular 
creatures  developed  from  cells  and  may  be  said  to  have 
inherited  the  reproductive  mode  of  life.  Humanity  has 
arisen  from  its  lower  ancestry  to  its  present  estate,  by  vir- 
tue of  the  reproductive,  alternate  mode  of  life.  Hence, 
to  die  appears  to  many  persons  to  be  as  natural  a  fate  as 
to  be  born;  yet  when  more  closely  examined,  death  is 
seen  to  be  an  unnatural  event,  a  result  of  hardship  and 
distress,  a  fate  repugnant  to  life  everywhere  and  a  catas- 
trophe to  be  escaped. 


The  Weismann  hypothesis  of  life,  death  and  heredity 
is  so  well  known  and  so  generally  accepted,  in  part,  among 
English  and  American  biologists,  that  an  extended  state- 
ment of  it  is  unnecessary  here.  It  has  taken  its  place  in 
our  science ;  and  the  two  important  modifications  to  which 
it  must  be  subjected  are  now  fairly  well  outlined.  Pro- 
fessor Weismann  has  been  termed  the  Darwin  of  cell  devel- 
opment; to  the  present  writer  it  seems  that  he  might 
better  be  called  the  Lamarck,  and  that  the  Darwin  of  the 
animal  cell  has  yet  to  appear. 

Weismann's  positions  are  (1)  that  death  is  not  an  in- 
herent necessity  of  unicellular  life.  The  unicells  do  not 
die,  but  divide,  giving  rise  to  offspring  by  fission.  "  No 


The  Message  of  Science.  67 

amoeba  has  ever  lost  an  ancestor  by  death."  Weismann  de- 
fines death  as  "a  definite  arrest  of  life.  The  proof  of 
death  is  that  the  organized  substance  which  previously 
gave  rise  to  the  phenomena  of  life  forever  ceases  to  origi- 
nate such  phenomena."  Death  implies  the  presence  of 
something  dead.  An  amoeba,  for  example,  produces  off- 
spring by  dividing  into  two  amoebae.  By  this  act  of 
fission  the  parent  disappears  in  the  two  children,  but  has 
not  died.  Hence  arises  Weismann's  conception  of  the 
natural  immortality  of  the  protozoons.  The  protozoons 
die  only  from  accidents  of  heat,  cold,  or  violence.  This 
view,  however,  has  now  of  necessity  to  be  modified. 

(2)  These  deductions  apply  not  only  to  protozoons,  but 
essentially  to  all  living  creatures  which  produce  offspring 
by  fission ;  and  it  is  on  this  basis  that  Weismann  has  built 
up  his  theory  of  the  origin  of  death,  briefly  this :  Since 
amoebae  and  other  unicells  which  reproduce  by  fission  are 
naturally  immortal,  death  must  be  regarded  as  peculiar  to 
multicellular  organisms  (metazoa).  In  the  metazoa  where 
the  cells  are  organized  with  differentiation  of  function, 
there  are  two  distinct  classes  or  groups,  those  which 
develop  to  form  the  animal  body  (soma),  and  the  repro- 
ductive cells,  confined  to  the  generative  tract.  The 
former  (somatic  cells)  grow  till  the  organic  limits  are 
reached,  live  for  a  time  and  fall  into  senescence  ;  the  lat- 
ter (the  reproductive  cells)  are  the  units  from  which  the 
next  generation  will  be  developed.  The  somatic  cells  are 


68  Natural  Salvation. 

concerned  only  with  the  life  and  welfare  of  the  individual, 
the  reproductive  cells  with  the  continuance  of  the  species. 
Of  the  two  classes  of  cells  the  reproductive  live  on  from 
generation  to  generation,  never  die  in  fact ;  the  somatic 
cells  alone  are  subject  to  death.  The  reproductive  cells 
are  immortal,  as  the  amoeba  is  immortal ;  they  die  only  by 
the  —  to  them  —  accident  of  the  death  of  the  body. 

(3)  It  is  an  error  to  regard  the  animal  or  human  organ- 
ism (soma)  as  the  essential  or  important  part.     The  re- 
productive tissue  (germ-plasm)  alone  is  of  importance. 
The  soma  is  subordinate  and  exists   for  the   purpose  of 
carrying  forward  the  germ-plasm.     It  is  its  vehicle  of  life, 
exists  for  no  other  object,  and  has  no  other  raison  (T$tre. 
In  the  opinion  of  Professor  Weismann,  the  human  brain 
exists  solely  for  the  purpose  of  nourishing,  protecting,  and 
bearing  forward  the  group  of  cells  lodged  in  the  organs  of 
generation. 

(4)  He  further  holds  that  the  origin  of  death  is  found 
in  the  consideration,  that  it  is  advantageous  to  the  species 
that  the  individual  animals,  or  humans,  shall  die.     "  If  for 
a  moment  we  imagine  that  one  of  the  higher  animals  were 
to  become  immortal,  it  is  perfectly  obvious  that  it  would 
cease  to  be  of  value  to  the  species  to  which  it  belongs. 
On  one  hand,  there  is  the  necessity  of  reproduction,  on 
the  other,  the  utility  of  death."     He  argues  that  the  dura- 
tion of  individual  life  is,  in  all  cases,  that  which  is  best 
for  the  species.     For  example,  the  May-fly  lives  but  a  few 


The  Message  of  Science.  69 

hours,  because  no  more  time  is  needed  for  depositing  her 
eggs.  With  mammals,  on  the  other  hand,  years  are  re- 
quired for  the  rearing  of  offspring  sufficient  to  make  good 
their  places  in  nature. 

(5)  With  regard  to  the  proximate   causes   of   death, 
Weismann  holds  it  to  be  due  to  the  somatic  cells  losing  the 
power  of  growth  and  multiplication  after  a  certain  length 
of  time,  or  a  certain  number  of  cell  generations.    "  Length 
of  life  in  the  individual  is  dependent  upon  the  number  of 
generations  of  somatic  cells,  which  are  able  to  succeed 
each  other  from  the  original  endowment  in  the  ovum." 

(6)  As   regards   heredity   and   inheritance,    Professor 
Weismann  discredits  the  common  opinion  that  the  per- 
sonal lives,   habits    and    efforts   of    parents    affect    the 
character  of  their   offspring.     His  theory  of  a   distinct 
germ-plasm  controverts  the  concept  of  Darwin  that  "gem- 
mules  "  from  all  the  somatic  cells  are  garnered  up  in  the 
reproductive  cells,  and  thus  reduplicate  the  parents  in 
their  offspring.     Nothing  of  this,  from  the  soma,  is  con- 
veyed to   the    germ-plasm,  or   affects,  save   in   extreme 
contingencies,  the  reproductive  cells. 

Like  Herbert  Spencer,  Weismann  conceives  that  life  on 
its  lowest  plane,  unmodified  by  environment  and  unor- 
ganized, exists  through  or  by  virtue  of  "physiological 
units,"  which  he,  however,  terms  biophors  (life-bearers), 
a  conception  not  unlike  that  of  the  plasomes  of  Briicke, 
or  the  plastidules  of  Haeckel.  In  the  lowest  forms  of 


70  Natural  Salvation. 

life,  the  biophors  are  little  organized ;  but,  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  environment,  as  evolution  proceeded,  the 
biophors  assumed  certain  persistent  relationships  to  each 
other  and  formed  themselves  in  fixed  groups.  Such  groups 
determined  the  character  of  the  cell,  and  to  these  Professor 
Weismann  has  given  the  name  of  cell-determinants. 

Numbers  of  determinants  are  associated  in  larger 
groups,  termed  ids,  and  ids  again  as  idants  :  relationships 
of  biophors  which  form  parts  of  the  centrosome  and 
chromosome  of  the  cell. 

(7)  It  is  Professor  Weismann's  conception  that  death 
—  touching  its  origin  —  is  intimately  connected  with 
sexual  reproduction. 

That  the  protozoons  are  naturally  immortal  and  that 
death  is  confined  to  the  metazoons  has  been  refuted  since 
Professor  Weismann  put  forth  his  hypothesis  in  1881. 
Maupas  has  shown  that  certain  protozoons  exhibit  the 
phenomena  of  senescence  and  die  out  from  intracellular 
causes ;  also  that  protozoons  conjugate  sexually  and  are 
thereby  restored.  The  hardship  of  the  terrestrial  habitat 
affects  even  the  lowest,  simplest  forms  of  life,  perhaps 
even  the  "  biophors  "  themselves.  The  latest  advances  in 
physics  indicate  that  "  atoms "  tend  to  waste  away,  and 
future  researches  may  prove  that  the  ions  and  electrons 
are  not  stable  units.  Avoiding  death  is  less  a  question  of 
ultimate,  incorruptible  atoms  than  of  making  scientific 
repair  excel  natural  waste. 


The  Message  of  Science.  71 

That  many  groups  of  the  somatic  cells  tend  to  senes- 
cence and  exhaustion,  in  time,  is  apparently  true,  but  this 
tendency  should  not  be  looked  upon  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  fatalist.  Beyond  doubt  it  is  a  tendency  and  a  condi- 
tion which  can  be  remedied.  The  science  which  discovers 
the  condition,  will  erelong  discover  the  remedy.  The 
brain  group  of  cells  tends  least  to  senescence. 

It  is  but  natural  that  having  brought  forward  his  hy- 
pothesis of  the  germ-plasm,  Professor  Weismann  should 
attribute  a  leading  r61e  to  this  group  of  cells  and  give  it 
marked  prominence.  This  is  seen  in  his  unqualified 
assertion  that  the  individual  exists  solely  for  the  purpose 
of  bearing  forward  the  germ-plasm  from  generation  to 
generation.  This  deduction  is  true  in  a  sense,  but  hardly 
in  that  sense  of  finality  which  Professor  Weismann  is  in- 
clined to  ascribe.  Beyond  doubt  it  is  difficult  to  say  why 
life  exists  at  all.  The  purposes  and  intents  of  creation 
are  not  as  clear  to  the  biologist  as  to  the  theologian. 
Professor  Weismann  holds  that  the  individual  animal,  or 
human,  lives  as  long  as  is  necessary  to  bring  forth  and 
foster  offspring,  no  longer,  then  dies  because  its  death  is 
necessary  for  the  good  of  the  species,  or,  strictly  speaking, 
the  good  of  the  germ-plasm.  If  this  assertion,  with  its 
incident  fatalism,  were  restricted  to  evolution  in  the  past 
and  cast  no  black  shadow  on  the  future  of  evolution,  it 
would  be  more  rational,  less  repugnant  to  the  bond 
"  individual,"  who  is  made  to  play  the  r61e  of  a  hopeless 


72  Natural  Salvation. 

serf  of  death.  We  cannot  resist  the  conviction  that  ulti- 
mately, at  least,  the  germ-plasm  exists  or  will  exist  for 
the  good  of  the  individual,  not  the  individual  for  the 
germ-plasm;  that  the  brain  group  of  cells  is  of  greater 
consequence  than  the  generative  group.  But  again  we 
admit  that  it  is  rash  to  say  that  anything  exists  for  any 
purpose  whatever.  Purpose,  conscious  purpose,  does  not 
come  in  until  there  is  brain.  There  is  apparently  no  pur- 
pose in  lower  nature,  or  if  a  purpose  it  appears  to  be  an 
unconscious  one. 

According  to  the  Weismann  hypothesis,  the  reproduc- 
tive cells  give  rise  to  offspring  by  virtue  of  the  permuta- 
tions and  combinations  of  their  own  constituent  biophors  ; 
the  somatic  cells  do  not  contribute  to  the  germ-plasm 
either  from  their  substance,  nor  otherwise.  The  soma, 
indeed,  grows  from  germinal  matter  in  the  reproductive 
cells,  but  exerts  little  or  no  influence  upon  that  tract. 
The  germ-plasm  lives  apart  and  to  itself,  and  is  sufficient 
in  itself  for  all  which  we  know  as  heredity,  unaffected  by 
the  life  or  culture  of  the  soma. 

But  when  we  consider  the  intimate  relation  in  which 
the  reproductive  organs  stand  to  the  whole  organism, 
when  we  contemplate  the  close  nervous  connection  and 
sentient  sympathy  between  this  group  of  cells  and  the 
brain,  when  we  consider  the  constant  streams  of  electrons 
which  are  poured  to  these  cells  from  the  brain  and  other 
organs  of  the  sorna,  when  we  picture  the  steady  circulation 


The  Message  of  Science.  73 

or  ions  from  the  brain  cells  through  these  cells  —  it  seems 
well-nigh  marvelous  that  this  group  (the  germ-plasm) 
should  be  so  little  affected,  so  little  modified  as  Professor 
Weismann  would  have  us  believe. 


Later  researches  afford  indications  that  the  intimate 
causes  of  old-aging  are  resident,  primarily,  in  the  cell 
nucleus.  It  has  even  been  held  by  one  observer  that  the 
cell  nucleus  lives,  individual  and  apart  from  its  cell  host, 
originally  intrusive  and  parasitic.  But  if  so,  it  has  be- 
come so  well  domesticated  as  to  participate  naturally  in 
the  life  of  the  cell. 

The  nucleus  is  found  to  be  made  up  of  a  series  of  gran- 
ules, composed  of  a  substance  chemically  rich  in  phospho- 
rus, to  which  the  name  of  nuclein  is  given.  These  gran- 
ules take  aniline  stains  very  readily,  and  are  thus  seen  to 
be  connected  one  to  another  by  the  substance  linine^  which 
is  not  colored  by  the  same  dyes.  Thus  examined  in  old 
and  young  cells,  the  quantity  of  nuclein  in  the  latter  is 
found  to  be  so  uniformly  greater  in  many  instances  that 
the  deduction  is  made  that  there  is  a  progressive  diminu- 
tion of  nuclein  granules  from  youth  to  age,  as  the  nucleus 
divides,  giving  birth  to  new  generations.  As  the  nuclear 
granules  diminish,  the  somatic  cell  falls  into  senescence, 
sinking  to  a  condition  where  fission  ceases.  For  a  long 
time  it  rallies  and  divides  again,  but  produces  an  enfeebled 


74  Natural  Salvation. 

offspring,  till  finally  it  encysts  itself  and  forever  ceases  to 
be  parturient.  The  present  theory  is  that  no  new  nuclear 
granules  are  engendered  in  the  somatic  cell.  Like  the 
worker-bee  in  the  apiary,  it  is  differentiated  and  special- 
ized beyond  the  power  to  produce  offspring.  In  like 
manner  isolated  ciliates  lose  the  power  of  reproduction, 
unless  opportunity  is  given  them  for  conjugation  with 
other  individuals. 

Brown-Sequard  conceived  the  idea  of  reaching  and 
restoring  the  somatic  cell  by  injecting  triturations  of 
reproductive  glands,  as  medicines;  and  beyond  doubt 
methods  of  restoration  by  inoculation,  or  vivific  foods,  will 
be  discovered. 

The  rapidity  with  which  the  remotest  tracts  of  cells  in 
the  organism  are  influenced  and  permanently  affected  by 
the  introduction  of  minute  quantities  of  remedial  sub- 
stances into  the  blood-circulatory  is  now  well  known  to 
the  medical  profession.  Such  inoculation  affords  more 
direct  access  to  the  cellular  seats  of  life  than  the  alimen- 
tary tract  with  its  modifying  acids.  The  blood  is  in  im- 
mediate relations  and  actual  close  contact  with  the  cells 
which,  in  all  cases,  must  be  reached  before  remedial  effects 
are  produced.  Nothing  acts  in  the  animal  organism  until 
the  cell  is  reached  and  its  sentient  economy  affected. 
Many  eminent  physicians  are,  therefore,  of  the  opinion  that 
injection  into  the  circulation  offers  the  best  method  of 
administering  certain  medicines. 


The  Message  of  Science.  75 

Inoculation  to  produce  immunity  from  diphtheria,  small- 
pox, hydrophobia,  et  al.,  has  been  successfully  practised 
for  many  years,  as  also  by  veterinaries  as  tests  for  tuber- 
culosis. The  procedure  is  in  its  infancy,  as  yet,  but  is  one 
of  great  promise,  since  it  is  the  cell  which  must  be  acted 
upon,  and  the  rapidly  propelled  blood,  reaching  it  almost 
instantly,  comes  in  touch  with  its  sentient  surfaces.  As 
soon,  therefore,  as  we  can  discover  and  compose  regenerat- 
ing substances,  or  those  which  will  stimulate  regeneration, 
the  blood-circulatory  affords  an  efficient  route  to  every 
cell  in  the  body. 

What  these  substances  are,  we  do  not  yet  know,  whether 
artificially  propagated  nuclein,  or  reagents  which  stimu- 
late its  growth  in  situ.  But  if  anatomy  and  histology 
offer  us  one  hint  more  significantly  than  another,  it  is  that 
the  blood  may  be  made  a  breeding-ground  for  the  regenera- 
tion of  the  somatic  cell.  Five  thousand  well-equipped  in- 
vestigators, starting  off  with  enthusiasm  and  rivalry  to 
study  this  problem,  would  hardly  fail  in  twenty  years  to 
set  us  far  on  the  way  to  the  control  of  all  life.  What 
our  rich  men  spend  yearly  in  their  vacuous  craze  for 
horse-racing  alone  would  more  than  equip  and  main- 
tain these  researches.  Such  inane  squander  and  mis- 
direction of  the  world's  hard-earned  money  cries  down 
Heaven's  condemnation.  But  they  know  not  what 
they  do  !  Misled  and  bewildered  by  erroneous  creeds 
and  futile  ideals,  they  know  not  how  otherwise  to 


76  Natural  Salvation. 

spend  the  millions  which  they  even  believe  belong  to 
them. 

A  hopeless  phase  of  thought  has  come  to  many  biolo- 
gists from  regarding  the  ordinary  course  of  nature  as  final 
for  the  human  race.  Whereas,  nothing  is  more  probable 
than  that  we  shall  come  to  direct  and  control  the  proc- 
esses of  nature  in  the  cell.  What  takes  place  in  the 
nucleus  and  the  causes  of  nuclear  exhaustion  will  yet  be 
found  a  very  simple  chemical  problem.  The  control  of 
life  in  matter  is  unquestionably  before  us ;  the  entire  prog- 
ress and  trend  of  research  look  to  such  achievements. 
But  for  this  outlook  of  hope,  we  might  well  accept  the 
dictum  of  Bichat,  that  "  from  infancy  we  die,  day  by  day." 
The  cells  of  the  soma  develop  in  a  certain  way  and  to  a 
certain  end;  nor  is  there  the  least  likelihood  that  the 
human  organism  of  its  present  physiological  bent  would 
ever  reach  great  length  of  life. 

We  mean  that  the  somatic  cells,  unaided  by  the  human 
intellect,  would  continue  to  produce  an  organism,  subject 
to  growth  and  decline.  The  ancestry  and  nuclear  endow- 
ment of  the  cell  carry  it  to  a  termination  of  its  activities. 
This  is  more  apparent  in  the  dark-skinned  races  of  man- 
kind than  in  the  dominant  race,  and  still  more  evident  in 
the  lower  animal  orders. 

Lower  unassisted  nature  would  live  and  die  in  alternate 
generations  as  long  as  the  earth  offered  a  foothold  for  life. 
The  chemical  affinities  and  electric  tension  of  terrestrial 


The  Message  of  Science.  77 

matter  foster  this  method  of  vital  expression.  There 
would  be  little  hope  of  anything  much  better  or  longer- 
lived.  The  earth  is  not,  in  its  present  condition,  a  habitat 
for  deathless  life.  Its  inclemency,  its  extremes  of  heat 
and  cold,  furious  winds,  hours  of  darkness,  variant  elec- 
trical condition  and,  more  inimical  still,  its  hordes  of 
hostile  bacteria,  —  all  are  against  enduring  life-forms. 
We  see,  therefore,  that  in  a  manner  the  primary  instinct 
of  the  early  races  of  man  is  right ;  this  earth,  unregen- 
erate,  is  not  the  place  for  immortal  life.  Some  improved 
condition  is  to  be  sought  for  that,  some  promised  land,  some 
realm  of  godhood.  Not  till  this  century  has  the  vision  of 
all  these  human  ages  begun  to  be  interpreted.  Alchemists 
had  dreamed  of  a  sporadic  immortality  by  magic  potations  ; 
but  not  till  now  have  men  come  to  see  that  vastly  pro- 
longed life  is  to  be  the  outcome  of  brain  evolution. 

We  look  up  to  the  disk  of  the  earth's  older  sister  planet 
and  see  its  surface  spangled  with  a  strangely  familiar 
geometry :  parallel  "  canals,"  or  belts  of  vegetation,  and 
at  the  intersection  of  these  canals  "  oases  "  which  may  be 
the  Martian  realization  of  "  heaven,"  from  which  the 
germs  of  disease  have  been  excluded.  What  interplane- 
tary rivalry  in  good  works  do  those  "  oases  "  suggest ! 
Will  our  earth  ever  turn  its  face  to  the  gaze  of  the 
universe,  seamed  by  such  giant  engineering  ? 


78  Natural  Salvation. 

When  we  ask  the  question  broadly  —  Why  does  the  hu- 
man body  grow  old  and  at  length  cease  from  function  ? — 
putting  the  inquiry  in  the  bio-physical  sense,  the  answer 
seems  to  be  that  the  personal  life  embodied  in  the  organism 
is  at  length  overcome  and  overmatched  by  the  totality  of  the 
resistance  to  life  which  it  encounters,  from  the  embryonic 
stage  onward ;  more  specifically,  to  the  general  telluric 
resistance,  physical,  chemical,  molar,  molecular,  which  the 
protoplasmic  molecules  of  the  organism  meet  with,  as  long 
as  they  maintain  the  personal  life.  After  adult  age  is 
reached,  they  lose  ground  in  the  struggle  and  at  last  suc- 
cumb. The  downward  curve  of  the  somatic  cell  has 
begun.  But  there  is  a  period,  during  adolescence,  when 
the  cells  gain  ground,  when  they  make  head  against  the 
terrestrial  resistance  to  life  and  prevail  joyously,  with  a 
sense  of  victory ;  when  the  inherent  energy  of  the  personal 
life  is  more  than  sufficient  to  breast  the  opposition. 

We  have,  therefore,  to  picture  this  personal  life  of  the 
cell  as  an  impulse  which  for  a  time  rises  superior  to 
the  resistance,  then  slackens  and  falls  away  to  cessation. 

Yet  its  source  in  matter  is  apparently  a  constant  in 
nature,  inseparable  from  the  material  ion,  and  persistent 
in  matter  at  a  uniform  tension.  Why  then,  in  the  human 
organism,  is  it  exhibited  thus  intermittently,  as  "  wave 
motion " ;  in  adolescence  and  senescence ;  in  youth  and 
old  age  ? 

The  answer  is  that  human  life,  even  as  waves  on  the 


The  Message  of  Science.  79 

ocean,  or  sound  waves  in  the  air,  has  fallen  into  the 
rhythmic,  wave  mode  of  life,  as  a  general  result  of  the  ter- 
restrial resistance  to  life ;  and  that  the  cessation  of  vital 
energy,  seen  in  aging  organisms,  is  apparent  rather  than 
real,  marking  a  transfer  of  life  from  one  generation  to 
another. 

The  transfer  of  life  by  means  of  the  reproductive  ele- 
ments, and  the  subsequent  death  of  the  parent  organism, 
is  a  mode  of  life  into  which  all  animal  orders  fell  far  back 
among  the  earliest  metazoons,  if  not  in  unicellular  life 
itself. 

It  is  manifest,  too,  that  this  tendency  or  life  habit  of 
humanity  is  very  deeply  rooted  in  the  cellular  elements  of 
our  being.  The  cell  determinants  are  cast  for  growth  and 
decline.  Sterilization  of  the  reproductive  tissue  in  the 
individual,  removal  of  these  tissues,  or  the  most  rigidly 
enforced  continence  have  little  or  no  effect  as  regards  the 
aging  and  death  of  the  organism.  The  tendency  of  the 
body  to  follow  its  inherited  cycle  of  growth  and  decline 
is  inveterate,  and  not  to  be  changed  by  the  exercise  of  the 
will.  Something,  indeed,  this  will-power  of  the  personal 
life  may  effect,  but  not  that  radical  transformation  of 
being  which  the  perpetuation  of  the  individual  implies. 
It  is  to  our  science  that  we  must  look  for  prolonged  life. 

.Procreative  desire  rapidly  slackens  in  individuals  to 
whom  life  offers  sufficient  attractions  to  live  on  for  life's 
higher,  more  refined  pleasures ;  and  in  this  circumstance 


So  Natural  Salvation. 

we  have  a  certain  earnest  of  evidence  that  the  higher  in- 
tellectual life  of  the  future  will  physiologically  redound 
to  a  prolongation  of  individual  life.  Decline  of  the  pro- 
creative  instinct  follows  naturally  when  the  individual  has 
hopes  of  surviving  ;  and  such  decline  and  self-continence 
react  to  prolong  life ;  yet  centuries  would  scarcely  suffice 
to  alter  the  deep-seated  trend  and  course  of  our  ancestry. 
It  is  to  our  sciences  —  the  superior  intelligence  of  brain  — 
that  we  look  for  aid  in  prolonging  our  lives.  Man  has 
already  passed  the  point  where  he  relies  for  his  progress 
on  the  tedious  course  of  terrestrial  nature  unassisted.  He 
reaches  forth  a  Promethean  arm  and,  in  the  light  of  his  stores 
of  knowledge,  bends  lower  nature  to  his  wishes.  We  ex- 
pect to  bring  our  sciences  to  act  upon  the  cellular  basis  of 
our  lives  and  accomplish  its  regeneration. 

Under  low  nature,  man  would  never  surpass  the  purely 
animal  cycle  of  organic  growth  and  decline ;  of  adoles- 
cence, maturity,  and  old  age.  It  is  only  by  rising  superior 
to  the  lower  course  of  nature  that  man  has  become  some- 
thing more  than  an  animal  order  of  life,  recording  experi- 
ence in  written  language,  kindling  fire,  smelting  the 
metals,  impressing  the  lower  animal  orders  into  his  serv- 
ice, and  even  dominating  the  forces  of  nature,  in  order 
to  travel  by  steam  and  speak  around  the  globe  by  electric- 
ity. He  has  put  lower  nature  in  harness  and  now  directs 
natural  law. 

In  view  of  these  grand  victories,  why  should  he  despair 


The  Message  of  Science.  81 

of  altering  the  lower  course  of  nature  in  his  organism  and 
of  directing  the  life  of  the  cells  of  which  his  tissues  are 
composed?  The  question  is  a  novel  one,  in  this  sense. 
Hitherto,  biologists  have  assured  us  that  we  must  be  con- 
tent to  be  what  inheritance  would  make  us.  That  is  the 
old  cell  doctrine  in  a  nutshell.  Weismann  and,  in  gen- 
eral, the  German,  English  and  many  American  histologists 
base  their  theories  of  life  on  this  assumption,  namely,  that 
the  ordinary  course  of  nature  must  be  final  as  to  man's 
future.  Nature  is  fate. 

But  brain  is  higher  nature,  the  acme,  at  present,  of 
natural  development.  Everything  which  makes  man  a 
civilized  and  enlightened  being  has  been  obtained  by  brain 
mastery  of  lower  nature  and  the  diversion  of  her  ordinary 
courses  to  his  advantage.  Why  should  we  not  expect  to 
thus  arbitrarily  change  and  facilitate  the  nutrition  and 
life  of  the  cell  ?  In  point  of  fact,  that  is  what  has  been 
done  and  is  being  done  constantly  in  a  hundred  ways 
already.  The  position  of  not  a  few  biologists  on  this 
question  to-day  is  much  as  those  who  would  argue  that 
since  a  man  can  walk  -but  fifty  miles  in  a  day,  afoot,  by 
his  natural  means  of  locomotion,  or  swim  but  twenty 
miles,  he  can  never  go  to  San  Francisco  in  less  than  sixty 
days,  or  reach  Liverpool  in  less  than  five  months.  Three 
hundred  miles  per  day  are  as  natural  to  brain  as  twenty 
miles  to  muscle. 

It  is  to  science  that  we  look  for  the  control  of  cell  life. 


82  Natural  Salvation. 

Biological  science,  it  is  true,  is  still  in  its  infancy,  but  it 
is  a  very  hopeful  infancy ;  and  it  is  the  opinion  of  many  of 
its  best  exponents  that  within  another  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury we  shall  have  penetrated  the  secret  of  cell  nutrition 
and  growth,  and  opened  the  way  to  a  scientific  renovation 
of  the  tissues. 

But  faith  has  to  be  engendered  as  well  as  discoveries 
made.  Enlightened  man,  indeed,  is  but  just  awakening 
to  the  idea  that  he  may  possibly  escape  death  by  setting 
his  wits  to  work  to  this  end ;  and,  as  ever,  there  is  the 
olden  outcry  of  impiety  raised  against  the  conception,  as 
if  it  were  wrong  to  try  to  live  !  As  if  it  were  not  natural 
to  live  on ! 

But  greatly  prolonged  life  implies  an  amelioration  of 
all  the  conditions  of  the  terrestrial  habitat,  and  within 
fifty  years  well-nigh  complete  control  of  the  aerial  currents 
and  rainfall  might  be  attained,  if  only  a  modicum  of  the 
intellect  of  the  race  could  be  concentrated  upon  these 
problems.  This  achievement  will  go  far  to  bring  about 
that  physical  paradisation  of  the  earth,  needful  to  redeem 
it  from  the  imputation  which  it  has  so  long  endured,  of 
being  "  a  dreary  bourne  "  and  a  place  of  exile  to  homesick 
souls  who  long  to  flee  away  to  some  better  land.  The 
earth  will  yet  be  made  one  of  "  the  garden  spots  "  of  the 
universe.  It  is  a  purely  physical  problem,  and  not  a  little 
of  the  data  for  its  solution  is  already  in  our  hands.  Fore- 
telling the  weather  is  the  first  step  to  controlling  the 


The  Message  of  Science  83 

weather.  It  is  a  question  of  the  electrical  distribution 
and  regulation  of  the  solar  heat  which  falls  on  the  earth's 
surface,  and  the  direction  of  the  "trade"  or  retro-rotary 
winds  due  to  rarefaction  and  the  earth's  axial  motion. 

The  electrical  distribution  of  the  earth's  share  of  the 
sun's  radiation  will  make  it  possible,  not  only  to  regulate 
the  rainfall,  but  gage  vaporization  from  the  ocean  and 
lakes.  Droughts  and  freshets,  tornadoes  and  frosts,  might 
soon  become  disasters  of  a  past  age,  if  the  resources  of 
control  which  are  already  coming  within  our  grasp  can  be 
applied.  What  is  expended  in  national  preparation  for 
war,  in  a  single  year,  would  suffice  to  initiate  the  prelimi- 
nary plants  and  stations  for  experimentation  in  heat 
distribution. 

Climate  is  as  much  a  terrestrial  condition  to  be  con- 
trolled as  a  city's  water-supply.  A  bad  climate  will  be 
quite  unnecessary  in  the  year  2000.  The  problem  of 
irrigation  is  properly  one  of  a  regulated  rainfall  rather 
than  of  dams,  canals,  or  artesian  wells.  Vaporization  and 
rainfall  are  the  factors  to  be  controlled.  An  equable  dis- 
tribution of  solar  heat  and  a  regulated  electrical  tension 
are  the  agencies  to  be  used  to  this  end.  The  whole 
problem  of  climate-control  is  already  outlined  in  physics,  as 
to  its  methods.  We  need  but  the  wasted  war  appropria- 
tions and  the  labor  of  idle  soldiers  to  put  it  in  operation. 

Such  a  half  century  of  rational  cooperation  would  see 
even  more  revolutionary  advances  in  our  methods  of 


84  Natural  Salvation. 

communication,  now  effected  by  mails,  telegraphs,  and 
telephones.  Not  only  will  messages  and  general  news  be 
transmitted,  electrically,  but  be  accompanied  by  photo- 
graphic and  phonographic  representation  of  passing  events. 
But  of  far  greater  significance  to  life,  its  prolongation  and 
improvement,  will  be  the  conquest  and  extirpation  of 
those  teeming  hordes  of  bacteria  which  infest  the  animal 
organism  and  render  all  organic  life  abnormal  and  pre- 
carious. Human  life  in  the  future  is  to  be  liberated  not 
only  from  known  "  germs  of  disease,"  but  those  swarms 
of  less  deadly,  but  yet  deleterious  micro-organisms  of 
which  the  human  body  is  the  host  and  which,  by  their 
presence  and  products,  enfeeble  life  and  maintain  diseased 
conditions.  The  human  body  must  be  regarded  not  only 
as  living  amidst  and  externally  exposed  to  microscopic 
life  of  a  hostile  and  noxious  character,  but  as  being  in- 
fested by  such  life  which  entering  the  blood-circulatory 
either  with  food,  water,  or  air,  penetrate  to  every  tissue 
and  organ. 

Ninety  per  cent,  of  all  human  casualties  are  either 
directly  from  the  presence  of  micro-organisms,  or  induced 
by  the  more  or  less  remote  effects  of  their  activity.  The 
extirpation  of  bacteria  will  be  a  long  step  toward  the 
achievement  of  vastly  prolonged  life.  Like  all  the  others, 
it  is  a  purely  physical  problem  and  only  waits  combined 
action  on  a  great  scale  on  the  part  of  mankind.  The 
habitat  of  man  has  to  be  purged  and  cleansed  from  these 


The  Message  of  Science.  85 

now  well-known  causes  of  death.  The  task  is  too  great 
to  be  undertaken  by  individuals,  and  remains  over  for  the 
organized  effort  of  nations  and  races. 

All  life  which  is  really  living  and  worth  living  is 
progress;  and  an  interesting  feature  of  the  next  fifty 
years  will  be  presented  by  improved  human  habitations. 
A  new  type  of  dwelling  has  already  appeared  in  the 
larger  communities  —  a  communal  house  —  admirable  in 
its  sanitary  arrangements,  ventilation,  heating  and  light- 
ing, with  a  common  kitchen,  relieving  the  individual 
heads  of  families  from  the  costly  and  unnecessary  drudgery 
of  so  many  small,  isolated  cooking-places.  The  lofty 
steel  and  brick  city  apartment  house,  however,  bids  fair 
to  be  replaced  for  much  of  the  year  by  a  country  habita- 
tion, located  apart,  amidst  rural  surroundings,  and  of  no 
greater  altitude  than  three  stories,  but  of  large  ground 
area.  Such  communal  dwellings,  for  four,  six,  or  eight 
families,  will  have  all  the  perfected  equipment  of  the 
larger  city  apartment  house,  and,  in  addition,  private 
gardens,  groves,  orchards,  and  rural  scenery. 

The  kitchen  will  be  a  joint  or  cooperative  effort,  but 
attended  by  difficulties  and  trouble.  For  it  is  the  ques- 
tion of  improved  food  which  will  longest  baffle  the  genius 
of  the  chemist  and  biologist.  Nor  need  this  be  a  matter 
for  surprise.  Nutrition  is  the  problem  of  the  coming  age, 
par  excellence. 


86  .       Natural  Salvation. 

Food,  as  we .  at  present  view  it,  seems  a  simple  matter. 
The  lower  animals  and  plants  afford  it.  It  has  but  to  be 
herded,  cultivated,  harvested,  and  cooked.  What  more 
simple  ?  But  of  all  future  inventions  and  discoveries, 
some  of  the  greatest,  the  most  important,  will  pertain  to 
food. 

At  present  we  ingest  the  errata  of  plant  and  animal 
life.  "The  dead,  alas,  are  in  us,"  and  "death  is  in  the 
pot "  ;  but  less  that  our  foodstuffs  contain  poisons  than 
from  lack  of  organic  energy  to  maintain  the  complicated 
apparatuses  requisite  to  reduce  and  make  it  ready  for 
assimilation  by  the  tissue  cells.  It  is  our  food  which 
renders  greatly  prolonged  life  impossible,  at  present. 
Nor  is  it  probable  that  the  human  organism  ever  was,  or 
ever  could  be,  bred  or  trained  to  live  forever  on  food  such 
as  human  beings  now  eat.  The  physiological  processes  by 
which  food  is  reduced,  comminuted,  corrected  as  to  its 
chemical  constituents,  peptonized,  hepatized,  oxygenated, 
and,  in  a  word,  carried  forward  to  higher  and  higher  stages 
of  chemical  instability,  fit  for  assimilation  by  the  tissue  cells 
—  all  these  processes  set  up  a  heavy  draught  on  the  col- 
lective, organic  life  of  the  animal  body,  and  necessitate 
the  putting  forth  of  energies,  on  the  part  of  all  the  cells, 
which  cause  an  ever-increasing  deficit  of  potential,  a 
growing  debt  from  overwork,  a  chronic  accumulation  of 
the  effects  of  fatigue,  which,  under  present  conditions, 
must  sooner  or  later  lead  to  a  running  down  of  the  cells. 


The  Message  of  Science.  87 

Under  favorable  conditions,  a  cell  may  gain  potential ; 
but  the  severe,  steady  draught  on  cellular  energy,  neces- 
sary to  maintain  organic  nutrition,  even  on  the  best  food 
at  present  procurable,  bankrupts  the  collective  energies  of 
the  cells  within  a  century. 

The  horse,  ox,  and  other  ruminants  that  have  to  do 
even  more  hard  grinding  and  furnish  more  energy,  rela- 
tively, to  maintain  nutrition,  succumb  much  sooner  than 
man. 

In  one  sense,  therefore,  it  is  our  food  which  brings  us 
to  death's  door,  that  is  to  say,  the  exhausting  physiologi- 
cal processes,  necessary  to  prepare  it  for  cell  nutrition, 
will  in  the  end  work  the  most  perfect  existent  animal 
organism  to  death. 

It  is  only  when  the  organism  is  young,  the  lungs 
pervious  and  the  tissue  cells  little  encysted  as  yet,  that  a 
gain  in  cell  potential,  for  fifteen  or  twenty  years,  can  be 
made  over  the  draught  on  vital  energy,  requisite  for 
nutrition. 

We  may  properly  attach  great  significance  to  these 
facts,  since  the  general  opinion  is,  that  food,  once  eaten 
and  drunk,  reaches  its  proper  destination  in  the  body, 
without  much  expenditure  of  energy.  Yet  sudden  death 
not  infrequently  follows  over-feeding,  purely  and  solely 
from  organic  inability  to  summon  sufficient  power  to 
initiate  the  process  of  food  reduction. 

It  is  along  the  line  of  improved  food,  as  well  as  re- 


88  Natural  Salvation. 

generation  of '  the  somatic  cell,  that  we  must  look  for 
happier  and  longer  life. 

Is  such  a  food  possible? 

Beyond  doubt.  But  at  present  we  lack  the  data  of 
nutrition.  We  do  not  as  yet  understand  how  a  cell 
nourishes  itself,  nor  how  it  might  best  be  nourished. 
The  cell  absorbs  particles  from  the  blood  plasma,  and  we 
have  a  general  knowledge  as  to  what  those  particles  are  ; 
but  of  the  modes  and  processes  of  intra-cellular  digestion 
and  nutrition  we  are  ignorant.  We  do  not  know  how 

-V 

much  of  that  food  is  actually  assimilated  in  the  cell,  nor 
how  much  is  rejected.  Beyond  doubt  the  blood  is  a 
comparatively  dirty  stream,  and  it  is  probable  that  the 
cells  suffer  constant  injury  from  the  dirt  which  they 
ingest.  The  intestinal  tract,  or  passage  along  which  the 
ingredients  of  the  blood  are  prepared  for  the  villi  to  en- 
gorge, is  literally  a  howling  wilderness  of  disgusting  para- 
sites and  bacteria,  many  of  which  are  hostile  and  destroy 
the  life  of  the  host  if  they  multiply  beyond  certain  bounds 
to  which  the  vis  medicatrix  of  a  healthy  organism  keeps 
them  down. 

As  a  first  step  in  the  study  of  improved  food  for  the 
future  we  have  need  to  see  what  the  primitive  cell  —  the 
protozoon  —  has  done  in  this  line.  For  better  food  has 
been  the  object  of  long  effort,  since  the  first  micro-organ- 
ism appeared  on  the  shores  of  the  primeval  sea.  Proto- 
zoons  like  the  rhizopods,  encysted  food  particles  which, 


I' 


I 


The  Message  of  Science.  89 

laboriously,  with  an  exertion  of  all  their  powers,  they  con- 
trived to  reduce,  digest,  and  in  part  assimilate.  It  was  a 
hard  life  into  which  they  put  all  their  energies ;  and  to 
their  humble  efforts  we  owe  a  debt  of  far-off  sympathy. 
One  can  but  think  softly  of  those  first  toilers  in  the  archaic 
marshes  —  so  much  depended  on  them. 

The  protozoon  had  his  small  stomach,  an  improvised 
colon,  and  maybe  a  unicellular  liver;  and  beyond  doubt 
our  ancestral  rhizopod  had  his  colics  and  his  jaundices, 
and  was  often  in  mortal  agony  from  terrific  peritonitises. 
It  could  hardly  be  otherwise,  considering  what  awful  food 
chunks  his  hunger  drove  him  to  surround.  But  he  strug- 
gled through,  by  hook  or  crook,  and  finally  drifted  into 
metazoic  cooperation  ;  and  thus  took  life  a  little  easier. 

For  after  locomotion,  better  food  was  the  first  problem 
which  multicellular  creatures  undertook.  The  animal 
organism,  with  its  blood-circulatory,  blood-corpuscles, 
blood  plasma,  cardiac  apparatus  for  propulsion,  and  lung 
tissue  for  aeration,  offers  a  most  interesting  and  suggestive 
study  of  the  way  the  protozoon,  in  its  later  r61e  of  physio- 
logical cell,  has  handled  the  food  question.  It  is  the 
object  lesson  of  the  protozoon  to  the  human  metazoon. 

To  secure  better  assimilable  food  for  brain  and  muscle  the 
confraternities  of  metazoic  cells,  very  early  in  the  division  of 
labor,  constrained  a  certain  number  or  tract  of  cells  to  act  at 
first  hand  on  food  substances  and  make  that  their  peculiar 
business,  so  as  to  get  it  in  more  available  form ;  these 


90  Natural  Salvation. 

were  the  cells  lining  the  food  pocket  or  future  stomach. 
The  labor  being  arduous,  the  metazoic  consentience  soon 
detailed  certain  other  groups,  or  tracts  of  cells,  to  aid  those 
of  the  stomach-sac  ;  and  these  afterwards  developed  vari- 
ously as  liver,  pancreas,  and  other  glands,  great  and  small. 

Still  others  took  up  the  work  of  passing  the  liquefied 
pabulum  to  those  other  tracts  or  groups  whose  business 
was  locomotion  or  intelligent  direction  of  the  whole  union 
of  cells ;  and  these  in  time  developed  as  arteries,  heart 
and  veins. 

But  to  be  transformable  to  energy  and  carry  on  the 
physical  business  of  the  co-partnership,  oxygen  was  needed ; 
the  liquid  food  must  be  charged  with  oxygen ;  and  another 
cell  group  took  up  the  business  of  admitting  external  air 
and  infiltering  oxygen.  From  this  group  has  developed 
pulmonary  tissue.  But  nerve,  brain  and  muscle  cells  ex- 
crete waste  products  of  the  nature  of  poisonous  refuse,  to 
such  deleterious  extent  that  another  cell  group  assumed 
the  duty  of  extracting  it  from  the  circulation  and  washing 
it  away ;  and  from  this  tract  of  cells  we  have  the  renal 
organs. 

Still  there  was  complaint  that  the  food  was  not  good 
enough,  and  another  cell  group,  entering  the  sanguineous 
current,  undertook  the  task  of  still  further  refining  and 
vitalizing  the  plasma,  now  on  its  way  to  brain  and  mus- 
cle ;  and  from  these  laborers  for  the  common  weal  have 
come  the  white  and  red  blood-corpuscles. 


The  Message  oi  Science.  91 

It  is  at  the  price  of  all  this  auxiliary  labor  and  only  by 
virtue  of  it  that  the  brain  and  muscle  cells  are  nourished 
and  are  able  to  live  so  long  and  do  so  much  in  the  way  of 
locomotion  and  intelligence.  Mind  would  be  impossible 
on  a  poorer  food  for  the  brain  cells. 

And  what  is  the  lesson  from  this  ?  Locomotion,  intel- 
lect and  a  lifetime  of  a  century  have  been  attained  by  the 
metazoic  cell  from  a  food  as  good  as  that  which  now 
comes  to  them  in  the  blood  plasma.  Yet  that  plasma  still 
contains  noxious  particles,  despite  the  efforts  of  the  living 
organs  which  labor  to  refine  and  improve  it.  The  infer- 
ence is  easy.  Science  must  come  to  the  aid  of  the  organic 
apparatus  and  furnish  a  food  clean,  pure  and  easier  of 
assimilation. 

This  brings  us  to  the  fundamental  question,  What  is 
food  ?  —  a  question  which  has  been  variously  answered. 
Nor  can  it  be  answered  at  present.  Food  is  that  which 
renews  the  cells  ;  and  the  cells  absorb  it  from  the  plasma 
of  the  blood ;  but  exactly  what  portion  they  absorb,  or 
how  much  of  what  they  absorb  is  necessary  or  best  for 
this  renewal,  is  not  known.  There  is  doubt  whether  the 
tissue  cells  are  renewed  as  to  their  intimate  structure  or 
that  nutrition,  at  bottom,  adds  ponderable  matter  to  the 
cell,  or  is  more  than  a  replenishing  of  ions.  We  do  not 
know  that  cell  food  is,  or  need  be,  anything  more  gross 
than  ions  or  electrons.  That  is  to  say,  the  idea  has  be- 
gun to  prevail,  that  nutrition  as  we  now  know  it  is  an 


92  Natural  Salvation. 

immensely  cumbersome  and  arduous  process,  attended  by 
great  strain  and  duress  of  the  human  organism,  all  of 
which  science  may  obviate  by  presenting  a  food  which 
will  not  require  such  hard  physiological  labor.  The  ex- 
cretion of  urea  has  been  held  to  prove  that  there  is 
structural  waste  and  replenishment  of  cell  substance.  As 
nutrition  is  at  present  accomplished,  this  appears  to  be 
true,  the  result  of  a  species  of  internal  combustion  from 
oxidation  in  the  cell.  Indeed,  it  is  evident  that  the  proc- 
ess of  nutrition  within  each  cell  of  the  organism  is,  on  a 
small  scale,  strictly  analogous  to  what  takes  place  in  the 
stomach  and  intestinal  tract  of  the  larger  multicellular 
organism  ;  that  is,  that  there  is  intracellular  ingestion,  ex- 
cretion, and  assimilation  of  an  esoteric  plasma  which 
renews  the  cell.  That  is  what  appears  to  occur;  but 
our  question  is,  Need  it  occur?  Is  it  anything  more 
or  better  than  a  laborious,  destructive  process  which  may 
be  obviated  altogether  by  inventing  a  more  ethereal 
cell  food? 

It  has  come  to  be  doubted  even  whether  a  cell,  after  it 
has  developed  and  grown  to  its  full  size  in  the  adolescent 
organism,  is  ever  normally  destroyed  or  renewed  so  far 
as  implying  change  of  structure.  The  cell  structure 
probably  stands  during  the  lifetime  of  the  animal.  The 
cell  is  no  more  wasted  as  to  its  organella  than  is  the 
greater  animal  organism  of  which  it  is  the  vital  unit. 
The  physiological  cell,  indeed,  is  a  minute  organism,  hav- 


The  Message  of  Science.  93 

ing,  in  many  tissues,  a  life  term  contemporary  with  that 
of  the  greater  metazoic  organism. 

What,  then,  is  the  actual  cell  food?  —  and  the  cell  food 
is  equally  the  food  of  the  metazoic  organism. 

Keeping  in  mind  that  much  of  what  the  cells  take  as 
food  from  the  blood  plasma  is  food  in  a  gross  condition, 
which  necessitates  intracellular  conflagrations  before  it  is 
reduced,  smelted  down,  so  to  speak,  and  sublimated,  fit  for 
actual  cell  food,  and  at  best  leaving  a  portentous  residue 
or  slag  that  has  to  be  gotten  rid  of,  —  keeping  in  mind  this 
fact,  I  say,  What  is  the  real  food  of  the  cells  ?  What  is 
this  last  product  of  intracellular  digestion  which  goes  to 
cell  maintenance. 

Beyond  doubt  it  is  something  refined,  "ambrosial," 
ethereal,  perhaps  the  ion  itself,  the  electron.  We  know 
not  as  yet  whether  there  is  a  decomposition  of  the  atom  of 
carbon,  or  of  the  other  elements  present  in  "protoplasm." 
Is  the  life  of  the  cell  dependent  on  the  restoration  of  the 
component  atoms  by  an  intake  of  fresh  ions,  set  free  from 
the  incoming  food-stream?  And  if  something  of  this 
nature  is  found  to  be  true,  is  it  not  quite  possible  that  a 
dynamic  food  which  may  be  administered  directly  to  the 
cells,  without  combustion,  waste  and  residue  is  the  de- 
sideratum of  life  on  the  earth? 

Why  are  98°+  Fahr.  of  organic  heat  requisite  to 
human  life?  Clearly  because  of  this  food  combustion 
rather  than  because  the  cell-of-life  cannot  live  at  a  lower 


94  Natural  Salvation. 

temperature;  life  is  possible  below  the  freezing  point; 
the  cold-blooded  organisms  do  not  require  so  high  a 
temperature.  High  temperature  in  mammals  and  birds 
appears  to  be  a  concomitant  of  nutrition  rather  than  a 
biogenetic  necessity  to  life  itself.  Not  that  animal  intel- 
ligence would  be  heightened  by  a  reversion  to  reptilian 
temperatures  !  But  other  methods  of  keeping  the  human 
organism  warm  could  be  found,  methods  less  destructive 
to  the  component  cells  than  by  extra-  and  intracellular 
oxidation. 

We  are  as  yet,  of  course,  at  the  first  outer  confines  of 
this  great  question  of  cell  food.  But  even  now  it  begins 
to  be  evident  how  much  depends  on  a  better  understand- 
ing of  nutrition,  and  the  great  desirability  of  directing  re- 
search in  this  direction,  backed  by  the  resources  of  the 
civilized  world.  Immortal  life  is  the  stake  which  science 
is  playing  for  along  this  line  of  investigation.  It  is  a 
true  world-problem,  one  of  those  more  than  Herculean 
labors  of  the  coming  century  which  call  for  the  united 
efforts  of  mankind. 


At  all  this  my  scientific  friends  will  smile  and  say, 
44 Idle  dreams,  Utopian  fancies!  Mankind  gives  no  token 
of  such  united  action.  Mad  Mullahs,  Mahdis,  and  War- 
lords bid  fair  to  rant  and  run  riot  up  and  down  the  earth 
for  centuries  to  come.  Men  have  not  sufficient  knowledge 


The  Message  of  Science.  95 

as  yet  to  perceive  the  tremendous  advantages  of  coopera- 
tion. Personal  selfishness  still  outweighs  the  larger  view. 
The  inherent  immorality  of  a  short  life  prompts  to  snatch 
at  personal  pleasure  and  let  the  next  generation  take  care 
of  itself.  It  is  all  a  part  of  this  horrible  immorality  of 
certain  death  and  cannot  be  ameliorated  as  long  as  human 
life  is  so  perilously  insecure  and  brief.  With  death  but 
a  few  years  ahead  at  best,  human  beings  will  work  for 
those  few  years  and  continue  indifferent  to  larger 
interests." 

All  of  which  is  but  too  true.  And  yet  there  is  always 
a  measure  of  altruism  in  the  human  heart,  a  balance  of 
philanthropic  good-will  and  a  strain  of  generous  heroism, 
prompting  individuals  to  deeds  of  self-sacrifice  for  the 
common  weal. 

It  is  to  these  saving  traits  in  us  that  posterity,  yet 
unborn,  makes  appeal.  Personally,  too,  we  would  all  of 
us  be  willing  to  do  more  than  we  do  for  the  common 
good,  and  cooperate  in  mutual  undertakings  more  than  we 
do,  but  for  the  impracticability  of  such  efforts,  the  diffi- 
culty of  initiating  united  action,  the  inertia  of  existent 
social,  political  and  economic  methods.  It  is  this  inertia 
of  olden  forms,  customs,  race  antipathies,  creeds  and  na- 
tional prejudices  among  the  billion  and  a  half  of  the 
earth's  inhabitants  which  so  baffles  and  withstands  rational 
progress.  All  of  which  brings  us  to  a  practical  question 
of  what  can  first  and  best  be  done,  under  the  circum- 


96  Natural  Salvation. 

stances,  to  unite  the  world's  resources,  combine  human  in- 
telligence and  render  it  effective  to  combat  the  causes  of 
disease  and  death  ?  What  is  the  first  practical  step  to 
this  end?  Can  any  plan  be  adopted  by  which  intelligent 
persons  of  this  generation  can  really  get  to  work  and  bring 
their  personal  efforts  to  bear  on  the  problem  ? 

At  first  it  appeared  possible  to  the  present  writer  that 
something  could  be  done  on  a  world-wide  scale,  and  that 
the  best  method  of  beginning  would  be  a  world-league  of 
science  and  of  educated  people  generally,  in  every  civil- 
ized country,  irrespective  of  race  or  nation ;  for  science  is 
a  common  nation,  a  common  country.  And  since  there 
are  many  spoken  languages  and  the  Latin  is  the  lingua 
franca  of  science,  it  seemed  proper  to  call  such  a  league, 
G-ens  Scientice  et  Pacis^  The  World-Nation  of  Science  and 
Peace. 

It  seemed  possible  that  scientific  men  and  educated 
people,  the  world  over,  might  thus  organize  to  promote 
research  on  a  grand  scale,  with  greatly  prolonged  life  in 
view.  It  was  at  once  recognized  that  membership  must 
not-  be  construed  as  inimical  to  existent  citizenship  and 
allegiance  to  one's  own  country,  but  only  as  pledging 
members,  individually,  to  use  their  best  efforts  to  promote 
such  researches,  and  in  case  of  impending  war,  to  avert  it, 
by  referring  the  matters  in  dispute  to  the  already  organ- 
ized peace  tribunals.  Also  in  case  of  nationally  selfish 
legislation,  to  defeat  it  in  favor  of  a  policy  more  inter- 


The  Message  of  Science.  97 

nationally  just ;  and  in  general,  to  promote  a  sentiment  of 
universal  good-will  and  confraternity,  having  clearly  in 
view  the  union  and  concentration  of  the  entire  strength  of 
mankind,  to  accelerate  researches  into  the  causes  of  disease, 
old  age  and  death. 

It  appeared  possible  that  such  a  world-league,  having  its 
headquarters  in  the  United  States  and  an  extensive  mem- 
bership in  every  country  of  the  globe,  might  come  to  ex- 
ercise a  controlling  influence  in  mundane  affairs.  An 
international  peace  society  we  already  have,  which  has 
opened  the  way  to  a  peace  tribunal ;  but  the  Gens  Sdentice 
et  Pads  would  be  of  wider  scope,  uniting  persons  of 
scientific  attainments  everywhere,  and  having  a  definite 
aim:  the  union  of  mankind  for  the  application  of  all 
science  and  all  the  world's  resources  in  the  coming  great 
struggle  to  reach  the  acme  of  Natural  Salvation ;  to  protect 
and  rescue  the  human  organism  from  its  present  hard  fate. 

It  was  not  believed  that  the  suggested  league  would 
make  much  progress  with  the  alien  races,  save  in  cases  of 
educated  individuals.  The  burden  of  all  progress  and  all 
achievement  will  long  rest  with  the  dominant  race.  The 
lower  races,  like  the  lower  animals,  will  of  necessity  be 
coerced  for  the  general  good  and  their  own  good.  The 
"rights  of  man"  are  sacred  only  when  the  man  is  dis- 
posed to  make  good  use  of  them,  and  is  intelligent  enough 
to  do  so.  The  right  to  make  the  world  better  is  a  divine 
right,  the  natural  prerogative  and  duty  of  superior  knowl- 


98  Natural  Salvation. 

edge.  An  ignorant,  ill-disposed  race  or  nation,  bent  on 
selfish  and  aggressive  courses,  may  properly  be  constrained 
to  do  •  right,  even  within  their  own  ancestral  territory. 
Men  or  races  have  no  natural  right  to  do  wrong,  even  if 
never  so  sincere,  never  so  self-holy. 

With  the  Indo-European  rests  not  only  the  responsi- 
bility to  do  right  for  the  world,  but  the  duty  of  seeing  to 
it  that  others  do  right.  This  is,  in  very  truth,  "the 
white  man's  burden,"  the  gravest  of  all  responsibility. 

In  nearly  all  civilized  countries  there  are  now  scientific 
associations,  or  what  corresponds  to  this,  which  might  on 
proper  representation  be  united  for  promoting  public 
enterprises  of  a  scientific  character.  These  societies  and 
associations  would  serve  as  the  national  units  of  the  pro- 
posed international  Gens.  Science,  which  is  the  main- 
spring of  all  present  progress,  is  thus  far  deficient  in 
methods  of  working  on  a  world-wide  scale,  or  even  of 
acquainting,  save  by  hearsay  of  the  press,  scientific  men 
of  one  country  with  the  aims  and  purposes  of  those  in 
another.  In  many  cases,  it  is  not  until  published  papers 
appear,  that  scientists  in  other  lands  gain  an  inkling  of 
what  cotemporary  investigators  are  doing.  Nothing  like 
an  economic  division  of  labor  in  scientific  research,  or  in 
the  way  of  mutual  aid,  has  as  yet  been  attempted.  This 
isolation,  too,  has  bred  a  kind  cf  jealousy  and  small 
secrecy  concerning  research,  which  obstructs  rather  than 
facilitates  progress. 


The  Message  of  Science.  99 

Perhaps  nothing  less  than  an  engrossing  common 
motive,  like  that  of  the  achievement  of  greatly  prolonged 
life,  will  suffice  to  unite  and  bind  together  the  scattered 
scientists  of  different  countries.  That  motive,  at  least, 
will  prove  the  greatest  incentive  to  united  action.  The 
sublimity  of  the  object  and  the  personal  stake  of  each  and 
all  in  the  success  of  the  endeavor  would  quite  overshadow 
the  baser  sentiment  of  jealousy  between  investigators. 
The  biological  science  of  the  twentieth  century  will  be, 
indeed,  working  for  life's  sake.  This  interest  will  become 
universal  and  intense.  Each  fresh  discovery,  each  new 
application  of  remedial  skill,  will  be  flashed  from  conti- 
nent to  continent  and  be  hailed  with  an  ever  growing 
enthusiasm. 

When  once  the  idea  has  gone  world-wide  that  science 
has  good  hopes  not  only  of  removing  the  causes  of  death, 
but  of  so  facilitating  and  perfecting  nutrition  by  improved 
food,  that  the  struggle  and  stress  of  living  will  be  lifted, 
then  will  be  exhibited  an  ardent  desire  to  live,  such  as  the 
world  has  never  known.  No  longer  to  pant  for  breath,  or 
writhe  beneath  the  torture  of  encroaching  bacteria,  will 
ennoble  life  and  endow  it  with  a  new  and  passionate 
desire  to  live.  We  grow  weary  of  living  and  resign  our- 
selves to  death  only  because  of  the  pain  and  hopelessness 
of  the  struggle  to  breathe  longer,  —  a  struggle  which  will 
cease  in  vital  calm  and  rest  when  research  teaches  us  how 
nutrition  takes  place  and  what  chemical  substances  are 


ioo  Natural  Salvation. 

the  proper  food  of  the   cells,  without  the  present  hard 
labor  of  preparation. 

No  lengthy  preamble  or  constitution  for  the  proposed 
gens  was  thought  necessary.  Its  strength  was  in  its  high 
purpose  and  intent.  Indeed,  the  name  itself  was  thought 
to  be  sufficient  as  constitution.  And  to  all  who  are  dis- 
tinctly Christian,  it  was  believed  that  the  idea  would 
appeal  strongly  as  an  efficient  means  of  bringing  the  world 
in  harmony  with  the  central  doctrine  of  the  faith. 


Two  years'  efforts  to  form  such  an  association  have 
brought  out  the  practical  side  of  the  idea,  and  shown  the 
difficulties  which  it  has  to  encounter. 

To  minds  normal  and  unperverted,  Natural  Salvation  is 
the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world,  the  outcome  of  life 
which  would  be  expected.  But  it  is  a  curious  com- 
mentary on  the  mental -condition  of  people  that  the  idea 
of  being  saved  from  death  by  natural  means  often  appears 
to  them  strange  and  unnatural!  Not  unfrequently  as 
something  portentous  and  "  wicked  "  !  That  higher  life, 
which  can  only  be  attained  by  the  loftiest  culture  of  the 
human  intellect,  is  feared  to  be  impious  !  The  fetters  of 
old  creeds  are  still  firmly  riveted.  A  few,  indeed,  and 
those  of  the  best,  recognize  the  truth ;  but  a  majority  still 
cling  to  the  fetish  of  ghost  life,  and  incline  to  the  belief 
that  humanity  will  run  through  a  cycle  of  evolution, 


The  Message  of  Science.  101 

decline  toward  the  lower  animal  orders  and,  in  the  end, 
perish  from  off  the  earth.  They  fail  to  see  the  signifi- 
cance which  attaches  to  the  steady  growth  of  the  human 
brain,  a  growth  which  separates  and  distinguishes  man- 
kind from  all  previous  animal  orders  ;  and  they  ignore  or 
depreciate  the  grand  fact  that  scientific  knowledge,  ac- 
cumulating from  generation  to  generation,  is  changing 
the  entire  course  of  lower  nature  in  man.  That  lower 
course  of  nature  is  still  their  criterion  for  the  future. 

The  idea  of  Natural  Salvation  as  the  result  and  outcome 
of  the  evolution  of  life  on  the  earth  is  still  too  novel,  too 
startling,  to  be  accepted  without  a  period  of  mental  incu- 
bation. It  is  too  subversive  of  old  beliefs  to  be  enter- 
tained without  a  struggle  against  it ;  or  at  best,  the  new 
belief  must  have  time  to  be  born  and  grow  up.  And 
there  must  be  further  demonstration  and  a  long  balancing 
of  the  evidence.  The  incubus  of  indoctrination  is  still 
heavy ;  nor  will  the  effort  to  attain  Natural  Salvation  begin 
in  earnest,  until  the  truth  and  the  facts  concerning  the 
"soul"  of  man  are  understood  and  accepted;  perhaps 
not  until  children  are  taught  the  simple  facts  concerning 
the  course  and  promise  of  life  on  the  earth.  The  effect 
of  two  generations  of  such  instruction  would  be  decisive 
and  marvelous.  Little  can  be  done  till  the  brains  of 
children  are  liberated  and  saved  from  the  prevalent  theo- 
logical untruth  as  to  supernaturalism.  As  fast  as  begotten 
and  born  the  brain  of  successive  generations  is  now  handed 


IO2  Natural  Salvation. 

over  to  this  bondage  of  the  unnatural,  these  fantasies  of 
the  Orient.  No  child  of  Indo-European  parentage  is  per- 
mitted to  see  life  in  the  light  of  nature.  The  young  cells 
of  their  tender  brains  are  indoctrinated  in  the  cradle. 
They  never  behold  the  universe  in  its  true  light,  nor  know 
what  life  really  is  or  signifies,  but  walk  through  their  span 
of  years  in  a  species  of  doctrinal  trance.  What  genius 
among  educators  will  rise  to  deliver  unborn  brain  !  In 
very  truth  he  will  be  another  of  the  Christs  of  men. 

And  so  slowly  and  at  such  sad  disadvantage  we  must 
seek  to  instil  the  truth  with  patience  against  the  inertia  of 
old  creeds ;  and  therein  lies  the  reason  and  the  apology 
for  this  little  volume. 


At  the  Darkest  Hour 


The  Hour  Before  the  Dawn 


\ 


AT  THE  DARKEST  HOUR. 

THE  HOUR  BEFORE  THE  DAWN. 

"Pj*ROM  many  points  of  view  the  opening  of  the  twenti- 
-^  eth  century  is  humanity's  brightest  hour ;  the  bright- 
est, the  most  hopeful  since  life  first  took  root  on  the  earth. 
Scientific  discoveries  are  multiplying  and  open  vistas  of 
promise  that  even  while  they  startle  encourage  us  to  hope 
great  things.  And  other  grander  discoveries  are,  beyond 
doubt,  at  the  threshold.  There  is  a  thrill  of  expectancy 
in  the  air  of  these  opening  years  of  the  new  century ;  a 
new  faith  that  all  which  has  preceded  will  soon  be 
surpassed. 

Inventions  have  prodigiously  increased  the  powers  of 
men  to  contend  with  nature  and  deal  with  material  sub- 
stances. Foodstuffs  have  been  improved  in  quality  and 
variety.  Civil  liberty  to  live  has  become  better  assured ; 
transportation  made  easy,  rapid  and  cheap.  Throughout 
the  length  and  breadth  of  the  earth,  the  press,  telegraph 
and  telephone  diffuse  intelligence  swiftly,  and  also  enable 
public  sentiment  to  find  expression.  The  industries  are 
organized  and  systemized  as  gigantic  agencies  for  human 

105 


io6  At  the  Darkest  Hour. 

advancement.  Wealth,  too,  is  wonderfully  increased  and, 
despite  all  complaints  and  forebodings,  was  never  before 
so  evenly  and  justly  distributed  to  all  men.  Never  even 
in  the  fabled  Golden  Age  have  all  men,  irrespective  of  rank 
or  birth,  shared  the  advantages  which  wealth  confers  so 
equally.  Not  that  such  distribution  is  yet  ideal  or  com- 
plete ;  far  from  it ;  but  the  present  complaints,  forebod- 
ings and  emeutes  are  themselves  the  signs  of  a  progress  in 
equalization.  In  no  former  age  and  at  no  previous  time 
has  the  so-called  "  poor  man  "  enjoyed  so  generous  a  share 
of  the  world's  wealth.  The  laborer  at  two  dollars  wages 
per  diem  reads  the  same  newspaper,  rides  in  the  same 
car,  attends  the  same  amusements  and  eats  much  the  same 
food  as  his  wealthier  fellow  and,  if  he  pleases,  may  live 
in  a  house  equally  sanitary,  if  not  so  large,  and  lie  down 
to  sleep  on  an  equally  soft  spring  mattress.  The  mere 
possession  of  a  great  fortune,  indeed,  now  gives  the  pos- 
sessor more  care,  but  little  advantage  over  his  less  opulent 
brother-man.  Curiously  enough  wealth  comes  of  itself  to 
be  the  instrument  for  making  all  men  equal. 

When  we  consider  the  humble  beginnings  of  organic 
life  on  the  earth  —  developing  as  it  has  done  from  the 
primitive  unicellular  life  —  the  spectacle  presented  by 
humanity  at  this  epoch  is  one  of  reasonable  promise.  From 
the  protozoa  multicellular  organisms  have  developed ;  and 
from  these  lower  animal  forms,  man  has  arisen.  It  has 
been  the  slow  work  of  millions  of  years ;  but  it  has  been  done 


The  Hour  Before  the  Dawn.  107 

so  surely  and  the  progress  has,  on  the  whole,  been  so  uni- 
form and  so  well  defined,  that  it  appears  highly  improbable 
that  this  great  evolutionary  effort  is  to  end  in  mortal  man, 
incomplete  as  he  is,  with  his  many  capacities  for  further 
progress  undeveloped.  Such  stupendous  balks  in  the 
order  of  nature  occur  only  along  the  line  of  catastrophism ; 
a  cosmic  catastrophe  involving  the  solar  system  might 
suddenly  or  slowly,  end  all  things  terrestrial.  Otherwise 
a  reasonable  expectation  obtains  that  humanity  will  make 
progress  in  the  future  as  in  the  past. 

What  inclines  many  students  of  history  to  take  hopeless 
views  of  man's  future  on  earth  is  the  contemplation  of 
races,  peoples  and  nations  that  have  risen  to  a  degree  of 
greatness  and  power,  and  then  declined.  At  short  range 
observation  the  Seres  and  Hindus,  for  example,  seem  to 
furnish  evidence  that  man  can  move  through  but  a  circum- 
scribed arc  of  progress ;  that  the  Cambodia  and  China  of 
to-day  inevitably  succeed  every  upward  saltus  of  mankind. 
Egypt,  Chaldea,  Persia,  Greece,  Rome,  Baghdad,  all  pre- 
sent similar  instances  of  rise  and  fall.  If  the  student  re- 
stricts his  view  to  the  history  of  any  one  nation  in  the 
past,  he  may  be  led  to  form  a  similarly  hopeless  opinion. 
The  progress  of  humanity  cannot  be  estimated  by  what 
takes  place  in  any  one  quarter  of  the  world,  during  any 
one  century,  or  thousand  years.  Contrasted  with  what 
the  world  was  in  the  days  of  Pericles  and  Augustus,  who 
could  have  seen  any  hope  for  humanity  in  the  year  700 


io8  At  the  Darkest  Hour. 

A.  D.  ?  Yet  the  greater  era  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  has  suc- 
ceeded, in  due  time. 

In  the  large,  mankind  has  developed  by  rhythmic  ad- 
vances and  pauses.  Collapse  has  followed  each  upward 
career;  but  always  something  grander  succeeds.  Ten 
thousand  years  is  the  briefest  time  period  by  which  the 
progress  and  probabilities  of  the  genus  homo  can  be  cor- 
rectly measured.  Ten  thousand  years,  indeed,  is  but  a 
yesterday  in  life's  great  curriculum  on  this  planet. 

Regarded  in  this  larger  light,  and  from  the  standpoint 
of  progress  in  the  physical  sciences,  art,  and  invention, 
humanity  is  at  its  brightest  hour. 

Grand,  hopeful,  and  benign  as  is  this  progress,  so  pro- 
phetic of  a  mighty  future  for  humanity,  it  is  none  the  less 
tinged  with  an  ever-deepening  sadness  for  each  and  all  of 
us,  personally.  A  magnificent  future  is  dawning,  but  we 
shall  not  see  it.  A  few  months,  a  few  years  more  at  most, 
and  personally  we  must  close  our  eyes  in  death,  and  drop 
back  into  the  insentient  void.  In  truth,  it  is  this  very 
awakening  of  the  intellect,  this  latter-day  vision  of  the 
future,  which  renders  death  so  grievous,  so  inopportune. 

It  was  not  so  with  our  ancestors.  Life  was  a  struggle 
too  hard,  too  grim,  to  be  greatly  prized  per  se  ;  the  ills 
of  life  were  numerous ;  they  suffered  from  heat,  cold, 
famine  and  the  malignity  of  foes.  The  pleasures  of  life, 
too,  were  chiefly  sensory  and  fleeting ;  hence  their  mental 


The  Hour  Before  the  Dawn.  109 

attitude  toward  death  was  one  of  comparative  indifference ; 
continued  life  offered  too  little  to  be  very  earnestly  de- 
sired. This  sentiment  concerning  death  prevails  largely 
to-day  in  the  Orient  and  among  savage  tribes.  Life  is 
not  wholly  desirable,  often  the  reverse,  it  holds  so  little 
of  real  enjoyment,  so  much  of  pain,  fear  and  general 
misery. 

The  case  of  the  well-to-do,  well-lodged,  and  happily  en- 
vironed American  of  our  own  times  is  wholly  different. 
Every  day  may  be  a  pleasure,  devoted  to  fresh  achieve- 
ments. 

The  youth  of  to-day,  moreover,  has  need  of  vastly  more 
time  to  realize  his  expanding  ideals.  Hitherto  it  was  a 
hut,  food  and  a  wife  that  formed  the  sum  of  a  young 
man's  ambitions,  the  goal  toward  which  his  life  developed : 
all  obtained  during  twenty  years  of  youthful  effort.  The 
aspirations  of  men  have  vastly  enlarged.  Fifty  years 
scarcely  suffices  to  realize  the  plans  necessary  to  success 
in  life.  Formerly  when  the  pleasures  of  life  most  sought 
were  sensory,  the  realization  was  not  far  to  seek,  and  when 
attained  the  vital  vis  viva  slackened.  But  the  pleasures 
most  prized  by  the  educated  young  man  of  our  times  re- 
quire a  longer  initiative,  three  or  four  decades  of  patient 
study  and  sustained  exertion.  Life  and  the  purposes  of 
life  are  laid  on  wider  lines  for  a  loftier  superstructure  — 
the  kind  of  living  that  outgrows  the  brief  lifetime  of  our 
forebears. 


no  At  the  Darkest  Hour. 

Our  ancestors,  too,  were  solaced  by  pleasing  illusions 
concerning  a  mythic  life-after-death.  The  "  soul  of  man  " 
was  believed  to  live  on,  disembodied  and  self-conscious, 
after  the  body  died.  The  founders  of  religious  cults 
made  skilful  use  of  this  illusion  and  framed  vast  systems 
of  ritual  and  dogma,  in  confident  reliance  on  which 
millions  lived  and  died,  and  even  rushed  to  death,  reck- 
lessly, battling  for  creed's  sake.  The  second  of  the  great 
religious  systems  of  our  era  was  successfully  propagated 
and  has  been  maintained  by  promises  of  paradise  to  those 
who  fall  fighting  for  the  faith.  The  devout  Christian 
regulates  his  life  with  reference  to  "  heaven,"  and  dies  in 
the  hope  of  going  thither  immediately  after  death,  —  and 
this  although  the  Founder  of  Christianity  apparently 
taught  that  the  kingdom  of  God  was  the  earth. 

The  point  here  made,  however,  is  in  effect  that  in  past 
centuries,  so  far  as  human  beings  have  aspired  to  longer 
life  and  desired  continued  existence,  the  aspiration  has 
been  satisfied  by  a  partial  faith  in  "  soul "  life.  Such  be- 
lief has  sufficed  considerably  to  assuage  the  pang  of 
dying,  and  incidentally  has  led  the  devotee  to  despise 
corporeal  life  and  disdain  the  earth  as  an  abiding  place. 
This,  indeed,  ig  the  spirit  and  morale  of  Christian  and 
Mohammedan  life.  Terrestrial  life  is  subordinate  and  de- 
sirable only  as  a  period  of  preparation  and  a  point  of 
departure  for  a  paradise  beyond  the  grave.  This  has 
been  the  consolation  and  the  mental  attitude  of  our  fore- 


The  Hour  Before  the  Dawn.  in 

fathers.  We  are  not  here  discussing  either  the  truth  or 
the  reasonableness  of  this  faith.  It  is  enough  to  say  that 
the  consensus  of  scientific  knowledge  precludes  it  and 
robs  us  of  such  consolation.  If  the  doctrine  of  evolution 
and  all  that  we  know  of  life  and  living  matter  teach  any- 
thing whatever,  it  is  that  the  dissolution  of  the  brain  and 
spinal  cord  is  the  end  of  the  conscious  and  subconscious 
life  that  subsisted  there.  Our  efforts  to  preserve  a  sem- 
blance of  faith  to  the  contrary  but  embarrass  and  delay 
the  growth  of  knowledge.  The  biologist  of  to-day  faces 
the  fact  that  death  is  the  end  of  personal  life.  It  is  no 
longer  the  ladder  to  heaven,  but  the  brink  of  uncon- 
sciousness. 

Psychical  research  has  accomplished  nothing  to  alter  or 
relieve  this  fact,  nor  is  there  the  slightest  reason  to  believe 
that  it  will  or  can  do  more  than  emphasize  this  "  hard 
condition  of  our  birth."  We  of  this  generation  share  all 
of  primitive  man's  instinctive  shrinking  from  death  —  the 
natural  abhorrence  of  death  which  ull  life  exhibits  —  and, 
in  addition  to  this  grief,  we  foresee  the  grand  future  of 
man  on  earth  and  perceive  that  for  us,  like  the  Hebrew 
lawgiver,  there  is  nothing  but  this  early  glimpse  from  a 
mountain  top  afar.  We  live  too  early  to  enter  the  land 
of  the  great  achievement.  We  shall  not  quite  pass  from 
death  unto  life.  For  us  death  will  still  be  an  irremedi- 
able evil. 

But  death  is  not  an  evil,  many  thoughtful  persons  will 


ii2  At  the  Darkest  Hour. 

rejoin,  or,  if  an  evil,  it  is,  at  least,  a  necessary  one.  What 
greater  calamity  could  befall  humanity,  as  human  society 
and  human  civilization  are  at  present  established,  than  to 
have  the  passing  generation  not  pass  off,  but  remain  on 
the  crowded  stage  of  human  life?  Even  war  and  the 
slaughter  of  thousands  is,  by  not  a  few  political  econo- 
mists, regarded  as  a  beneficial  event  for  relieving  the 
social  congestion  of  overpopulated  countries.  If  immor- 
tality were  achieved,  starvation,  suicide  on  a  national 
scale,  infanticide,  or  the  execution  of  aged  persons  would 
ensue  from  a  necessity. 

These  are  views  which  are  fairly  pertinent,  although, 
properly  administered,  the  natural  resources  of  the  earth 
are  undoubtedly  adequate  to  the  sustenance  of  six  billions 
of  inhabitants,  without  crowding  or  poverty,  in  the  place 
of  the  billion  and  a  half  who  now  dwell  on  it.  This 
latter  reflection  does  not  meet  the  objection  of  overpopu- 
lation, however.  Nor  is  it  necessary  to  meet  it,  in  the 
sense  of  providing  field  for  a  vast  population,  since  Nature 
herself  has  already  met  it  in  her  plan  of  vital  evolution. 
The  procreative  instinct  is  intensified  or  diminished  in 
ratio  with  the  duress  which  human  life  encounters  in  the 
struggle  for  existence.  With  the  hard- worked  and  short- 
lived, children  multiply  rapidly.  Where  all  the  conditions 
of  life  are  hard  and  evil,  procreation  is  active. 

On  the  other  hand,  education,  refinement,  ease,  leisure 
and  the  prospect  of  a  long,  happy  lifetime  redound  not  to 


The  Hour  Before  the  Dawn.  113 

increase  of  population,  but  rather  to  diminution.  So 
markedly,  indeed,  has  this  been  found  to  be  true,  that  the 
inference  is  a  fair  one,  that  were  enlightened  persons,  men 
and  women,  freed  from  the  fear  of  death,  the  cruder 
pleasures  of  procreation  would  be  foregone,  from  choice, 
for  greater  and  purer  joys  in  a  life  of  a  higher  type.  We 
may,  at  least,  reply  confidently  that  those  who  are  able  to 
achieve  greatly  prolonged  life  for  themselves  will  not 
overpopulate  the  earth. 

More  specifically  death  often  is  not  an  evil,  but  a  bless- 
ing to  the  hopelessly  diseased,  infirm,  and  decrepit.  Death 
may  even  be  voluntarily  and  logically  sought  by  the  hope- 
less sufferer.  There  are  grave  doubts  whether,  if  nothing 
better  were  to  be  hoped  for  in  the  future  by  humanity 
than  life  as  the  majority  of  our  fellow-creatures  hold  it  at 
present,  —  grave  doubts  whether  unconsciousness  were  not 
better  than  the  burden  and  pain  of  their  lives. 

These  phases  and  negations  but  prove  the  converse  of 
the  question,  however.  The  primary  instinct  of  life  is  to 
live.  Nature,  ab  initio,  makes  oath  that  to  be  is  better 
than  not  to  be  ;  nor  have  all  the  consolatory  sophistries  of 
creeds  ever  really  convinced  a  human  being  of  normal  in- 
tellect that  he  will  live  on  personally  conscious,  remem- 
bering and  seeing,  after  the  death  and  dissolution  of  his 
body.  Such  "  faith "  may  assist  a  little  to  mitigate  the 
bitter  pang  of  dying,  but  never  fully  reassures  ;  the  com- 
mon sense  still  perceives  the  real  situation,  and  cannot, 


H4  At  the  Darkest  Hour. 

even  in  its  ignorance  and  weakness,  wholly  believe  the 
kindly  meant  promissory.  At  best  we  resign  ourselves  to 
lapse  from  life  with  a  shudder  and  a  sense  of  awful  heart- 
break, and  on  the  brink  of  the  great  darkness  shrink  back, 
and,  feebly  struggling  to  breathe  again,  turn  our  dim 
eyes  to  the  beautiful  light. 

Man  has  literally  fought  his  way  upward  ;  he  has  bat- 
tled for  life  and  supremacy,  first,  with  the  fiercer  orders 
of  the  carnivora,  the  cave-bear,  the  machairodus,  then  with 
his  fellow-man  for  political  and  moral  freedom.  His  last 
grim  foe  is  death.  "  The  last  enemy  that  shall  be  de- 
stroyed is  death."  But  as  yet  — 

"  Death  reigns.    Dust  unto  dust  must  go. 
The  nations  wail  of  their  dread  foe. 
The  bitter  waters  of  that  Wormwood  star 
Which  burns  malign,  from  pole  to  pole, 
Are  to  be  drunk.     Who  may  console 
Their  mortal  woe  ?    Outwelling  from  afar 
The  grief  of  worlds  bewails  its  dying  pains, 
A  cosmic  dirge,  moaning  it  comes,  Death  reigns." 

To  all  normal,  healthy  life,  death  is  unquestionably  an 
evil.  Nature  has  nothing  in  common  with  those  theorists 
who,  making  a  virtue  of  temporal  misfortune,  seek  to  per- 
suade man  that  death  is  a  blessing.  Scant  must  be  their 
souls.  Man  has  developed  to  live,  not  to  die ;  and  time 
and  space  given,  man  is  omnipotent. 

How  much  of  literature  is   a  dirge,  a  cry   of   mortal 


The  Hour  Before  the  Dawn.  115 

anguish  for  friends  departed,  for  self  departing  from  the 
joys  of  life  !  Dread  of  death  is  the  spur  which  will  drive 
men  to  the  achievement  of  prolonged  life. 

Over  all  the  past  and  the  present  hangs  a  pall,  shot 
only  by  the  bright  intuitive  hope  that  death  is  not  a  final 
law.  With  the  Romans  Mors  was  a  goddess  in  black 
robes,  with  ravenous  teeth,  hovering  on  sable  wings  over 
the  whole  theater  of  life,  darting  hither  and  thither, 
snatching  its  prey.  The  imagery  comports  with  the 
Roman  character. 

With  the  Greeks  Thanatos  was  a  god  whose  reign  men 
mourn,  whose  mission  is  to  nip  the  joy  of  life  and  blast 
the  well-springs  of  hope.  At  his  approach  they  shrank 
and  cried,  "  Eheu  !  Eheu  !  "  The  conception  is  charac- 
teristic of  beauty-loving  Hellas.  Her  children  ever  shrank 
from  that  cold,  dark  realm  where  there  was  no  sun.  The 
despairing  cry  of  Electra  utters  the  Hellenic  sentiment 
touching  death.  Burdened  as  was  their  faith  with  the 
tenets  of  Egypt,  death  was  still  to  them  the  end  of  pleas- 
ure, the  tomb  of  joy.  The  Greek  poets  sometimes  sym- 
bolized Death  and  Sleep  as  brothers,  twin  boys,  lying 
asleep  in  the  arms  of  their  mother,  Night;  and  again 
Death  as  a  winged  boy  with  sad,  white  brow  and  inverted 
torch;  at  his  feet  a  butterfly.  These  last  were  poetic 
fancies  rather  than  popular  conceptions. 

The  Hebraic  portraiture  of  death  was  a  solemn  and 
august  angel,  flying  forth  from  God,  armed  with  a  sharp 


it 6  At  the  Darkest  Hour. 

sword  to  slay  the  children  of  men  who  had  sinned.  Hence, 
the  strange  description  of  death  in  the  Apocalypse. 

To  the  Hindu  death  was  personified  by  the  soul  of 
Yarma  (Adam),  the  first  man  who  died  (according  to  their 
tradition),  and  who  thus  became  the  monarch  of  the  dead. 

Our  old  Norse  ancestors  thought  of  death  as  a  cold, 
misty  presence,  rolling  darkly  on,  like  the  whirlwind 
storms  of  their  own  northland,  wintrily  enveloping  its 
victims  and  sweeping  them  away,  enwrapped  and  lost 
from  sight  forever.  With  them  death  was  associated  with 
the  bleak,  elemental  forces  of  the  air,  the  sea,  and  the 
night,  caught  in  the  strife  of  which  they  so  often  perished. 

In  our  times  and  in  all  time  the  vulgar  imagery  of  death 
is  a  skeleton.  Death  makes  a  skeleton  of  man,  hence  man 
makes  death  a  skeleton.  In  such  grisly  representation  he 
foresees  his  fate.  It  was  reserved  for  the  grandeur-loving 
genius  of  Milton  to  draw  death  at  once  awful  and 
truculent :  — 

"  The  shape, 

If  shape  it  might  be  call'd  that  shape  had  none 
Distinguishable  in  member,  joint,  or  limb  ; 
Or  substance  might  be  call'd  that  shadow  seem'd 
For  each  seem'd  either,  —  black  it  stood  as  night, 
Fierce  as  ten  furies,  terrible  as  hell, 
And  shook  a  dreadful  dart ;  what  seem'd  his  head 
The  likeness  of  a  kingly  crown  had  on." 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  death,  which  is  a  nonentity,  has 
always  been  typified  by  substantive  imagery.  In  a  word, 


The  Hour  Before  the  Dawn.  117 

the  utter  absence  of  energy,  or  force,  has  been  idealized  as 
a  monster  of  the  most  forceful  character.  Fancy  has  run 
away  with  fact.  Death  is  nothing  in  itself,  the  synonym 
of  nothingness,  and  has  never  been  better  defined  than  as 
the  absence  of  life.  Matter  is  inherently  endowed  with 
that  which  may  become  sentient.  The  human  intellect, 
with  this  element  of  immortality  within  its  grasp,  shud- 
ders and  sighs  to  cease.  When  the  real  situation  shall 
become  evident  to  human  vision,  a  new  era  of  mental 
activity  will  dawn.  No  longer  vainly  praying  for  miracu- 
lous redemption,  man  will  arise  to  work  out  his  own  sal- 
vation, and  labor  for  an  immortality  which  will  have  no 
uncertain  hold  on  his  faith.  The  task  is  mighty;  but  a 
grand  idea  never  yet  perished  for  want  of  soldiers.  Man, 
at  least,  has  this  record  for  his  encouragement.  Men 
would  not  be  worthy  of  immortal  life,  would  not  be  fit 
for  it,  if  they  cannot  achieve  it  for  themselves.  When- 
ever in  the  past  man  has  risen  superior  either  to  brute 
beasts  or  brute  passions,  it  has  been  by  his  own  unaided 
exertions.  However  piously  he  may  have  prayed  and 
trusted,  the  fight  has  always  been  his  own.  Overmatched, 
the  good  and  the  bad  have  always  been  crushed  alike. 
God  is  not  on  the  hither  side  of  matter.  What  is  on 
its  far  side  we  know  not.  Yet  Right,  in  the  long  run, 
appears  to  be  a  better  soldier  than  Wrong.  We  may,  if 
we  please,  fancy  that  God  put  this  ingredient  in  mat- 
ter and,  having  done  that,  retired  to  Olympus. 


n8  At  the  Darkest  Hour. 

But  during  twelve  hundred  years  the  average  of  human 
life  has  not  been  raised  more  than  twenty  years,  at  most, 
what  hope,  then,  of  greatly  prolonging  life  in  ages  to 
come? 

The  reply  is  that  the  outlook  cannot  be  correctly  esti- 
mated by  this  past  slow  gain  on  death.  Through  what 
unwritten  ages  did  man  wander  over  prehistoric  conti- 
nents, a  wretched,  fireless  troglodyte,  a  feeder  on  acorns 
and  berries,  yet  in  one  brief  moment  the  first  spark  of  fire 
was  struck,  —  fire  which  made  him  the  rich  owner  of  all 
the  metals,  which  opened  a  new  realm  of  comfort,  warmth, 
and  food  and  spread  the  race  over  vast  regions  hitherto 
uninhabitable.  In  that  single  moment  man  rose  to  a 
higher  plane  of  existence. 

Within  historic  times,  but  four  centuries  ago,  human 
progress  was  vastly  accelerated  by  a  single  discovery, 
which  was  little  more  than  a  lucky  accident.  Up  to  the 
times  of  Gutenberg,  what  progress  had  been  made  for  three 
thousand  years  in  the  art  of  book-making  ?  Till  then, 
books  had  been  laboriously  copied  with  stile  and  pen  and 
so  far  as  any  one  could  then  have  foreseen,  bade  fair  al- 
ways to  be  thus  tediously  reproduced.  A  copy  of  the 
Scriptures  cost  from  two  to  three  thousand  dollars,  equiva- 
lent to  six  or  nine  thousands  in  this  century ;  but  a  single 
decade  saw  the  art  of  printing  born. 

Dogmatic  unbelief  may  be  as  greatly  mistaken  as  dog- 
matic faith.  The  times  are  ripe  for  great  discoveries 


The  Hour  Before  the  Dawn.  119 

touching  life  and  its  co-relative  modes  of  energy.  The 
epoch  —  and  it  will  be  the  grandest  of  human  epochs  — 
when  the  protoplasmic  molecule  shall  render  up  its  secret 
to  human  scrutiny  is  near  at  hand.  Man  will  then  be  no 
longer  the  abject  serf  of  death,  but  a  belligerent,  contend- 
ing for  his  freedom,  with  the  prize  of  unlimited  life  before 
his  eyes. 

There  are,  it  is  true,  degenerates  who  aver  that  all  life 
is  an  evil.  There  are  clubs  that  seek  out,  ponder,  and 
discuss  modes  of  euthanasia.  They  should  be  wished 
success.  Such  pessimism  is  an  evil  diathesis,  a  mental  mal- 
formation of  which  the  world  would  be  well  rid,  by  the 
shortest  method.  But  we  are  speaking  of  normal  men, 
not  of  posers,  perverts,  drug-bemused  manikins  and 
alcoholics. 

For  the  normal  man  of  science  a  new  and  sterner 
gospel  is  requisite.  The  awakening  from  dreams  of  para- 
dise has  come,  and  in  very  truth  we  have  little  enough 
to  requite  us.  The  devotee  has  much  the  more  of  solace, 
and  many  there  are  who  will  prefer  the  sacerdotal  promise 
to  the  grim  reality.  It  is  so  much  easier  to  accept  the 
gilded  promissory  of  the  established  church  than  grapple 
with  the  real  problems  of  life  !  Confessing  one's  sins  is 
so  much  simpler  than  actual  reformation  !  What  wonder 
that  the  earth  groans  beneath  a  weight  of  mosques  and 
cathedrals,  or  that  four  continents  glisten  with  church 
vanes !  Devotee  and  priest  have  this  advantage :  they 


I2O  At  the  Darkest  Hour. 

die  with  great  hopes,  and  will  never  learn  their  mistake ; 
whereas  the  man  of  science  dies  with  the  certainty  that 
his  course  is  run.  Science,  alas,  has  added  a  pang  to 
death,  for  all  her  children. 

It  is,  therefore,  a  sterner  gospel  into  which  we  of  this 
generation  have  to  be  baptized.  We  have  partaken  of 
the  tree  of  knowledge.  The  pleasant  illusions  of  man's 
early  creeds  have  been  brushed  ruthlessly  away.  We 
face  Nature's  hard  law  with  no  fairy  tale  to  disguise  its 
inclemency.  Immortal  life  will  be  achieved  by  the  aid  of 
applied  science  ;  it  is  what  the  whole  scheme  of  evolution 
moves  forward  to ;  it  is  the  dream  of  all  the  long-suffering 
ages  of  man;  it  will  be  initiated  on  earth  within  three 
centuries,  perhaps  within  two,  so  rapid  is  the  growth  of 
knowledge,  so  accelerated  the  march  of  discovery.  But 
we  who  have  to  initiate  the  great  effort  will  not  look 
upon  the  dawn  of  the  achievement,  nor  be  among  the  first 
of  the  sons  of  men  who  rise  superior  to  death. 

We  can  but  feel,  therefore,  that  we  live  at  humanity's 
darkest  hour  —  the  hour  before  the  dawn.  We  live  too 
late  to  be  buoyed  and  comforted  by  the  illusions  of 
religion,  too  soon  to  reach  the  goal  and  snatch  our  lives 
from  the  grasp  of  death. 

Have  we  the  strength  to  work  on,  quite  the  same,  and 
bravely  round  the  curve  for  the  sake  of  those  more  fortu- 
nate who  shall  come  after  us  ?  Have  we  the  devotion  to 
face  the  inevitable,  turn  in  our  best  work  and  die,  uncom- 


The  Hour  Before  the  Dawn.  121 

plainingly  ?  Shall  we  demonstrate  the  spirit,  intent  and 
real  meaning  of  the  doctrines  of  Jesus  Christ,  or  see  these 
grand  doctrines  lapse  to  a  vacuous  ritual  ? 

A  thousand  centuries  of  life's  hard  struggle  on  the 
earth  cry  out  to  speak  through  us,  and  bid  us  win  the 
promise  of  evolution.  We  are  born  to  this  post  of  honor 
and  duty.  Untold  labor  and  pain  have  confided  it  to  us. 

Are  we  worthy  ?  Or  shall  we  quit  the  task,  malinger, 
turn  sensuous,  skulk  back  to  cover  of  illusion  and  cease 
to  be  progressive? 

If  stronger  beings  on  other  spheres  of  space  are 
watching  us  from  afar  at  this  dark  hour  of  our  planet's 
evolution,  may  they  infuse  patience  and  courage  into  our 
hearts.  We  have  need  of  them. 


from  tii 

Have  wt> 
bravely  rouni 
nate  who  shaL 
face  the  inevita 


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